For anyone wondering how things did go with the Roadrunner techs, here's the transcript.
Anthony S.: Thank you for choosing Road Runner Chat. My name is Anthony S., may I have the first and last name and the phone number including the area code of the account holder please?
You: Gary Smith, ***-***-***
Anthony S.: With whom am I speaking currently?
You: Noah. His son.
Anthony S.: Thank you, what technical issue may we help you with and have you contacted us about this issue before?
You: I spoke with someone about 5 minutes ago about it. He instructed me to disconnect, and deactivate any routers, firewalls, ect and then come back on here.
You: My upload bandwidth has been unstable and slow since sometime yesterday.
You: Typically, in the year or so I've had roadrunner, the upload speed was around 384kbps.
You: Yesterday and up to now, it has decreased to around 60kbps.
You: It is also unstable, in addition to being slow.
Anthony S.: Really. Did you do any other troubleshooting with the other agent?
You: No. We didn't start because he wanted me to connect the computer to the router directly, first.
Anthony S.: So now you are directly connected to the cable modem, correct?
You: oops
You: I mean directly to the cable modem.
You: Yes.
Anthony S.: What operating system is installed?
You: Windows XP Home.
Anthony S.: Have you rebooted your modem since this started happening? To reboot your modem, you unplug it from the power for two full minutes, then plug it back into the power outlet.
You: Yes
You: I cycled the power like that several times.
Anthony S.: First we'll check the IP address. Let's click on Start and go to Control Panel. In the Control Panel, open Network and Internet Connections, and then click Network Connections. There you should see a Local Area Connection icon. Let's double-click that, and then go to the tab marked Support on the right side. What is the IP address listed? What type of Address is it listed as beside Address Type?
You: 24.74.63.106
Anthony S.: We'll run a trace together to Yahoo. This will determine where a slow point may be. To run a traceroute, click on Start, Run, type in the word cmd then click OK. In the DOS window type in "tracert www.yahoo.com" then press Enter. When the trace is complete please copy the results into the chat window.
You: Assigned by DCHP
You: 1 11 ms 32 ms 7 ms 10.66.112.1 2 9 ms 9 ms 8 ms fas6-0-0.chrlncshl-rtr1.carolina.rr.com [24.93.6
6.85]
3 36 ms 18 ms 12 ms 24.93.66.129
4 8 ms 17 ms 12 ms srp0-0.chrlncsa-rtr3.carolina.rr.com [24.93.66.1
45]
5 9 ms 10 ms 32 ms srp2-0.chrlncsa-rtr2.carolina.rr.com [24.93.66.1
78]
6 10 ms 14 ms 10 ms pop2-cha-P2-3.atdn.net [66.185.149.37]
7 22 ms 25 ms 9 ms bb2-cha-P0-1.atdn.net [66.185.138.82]
8 14 ms 13 ms 14 ms bb2-atm-P6-0.atdn.net [66.185.152.30]
9 15 ms 16 ms 14 ms pop1-atm-P1-0.atdn.net [66.185.147.195]
10 14 ms 13 ms 15 ms bpr1-so-2-1-0.AtlantaPaix.cw.net [208.173.59.21]
11 17 ms 13 ms 22 ms agr2-loopback.Atlanta.cw.net [208.172.66.102]
12 15 ms 15 ms 13 ms dcr2-so-7-1-0.Atlanta.cw.net [208.172.75.197]
13 42 ms 25 ms 25 ms dcr1-loopback.Washington.cw.net [206.24.226.99]
14 33 ms 26 ms 27 ms bhr1-pos-0-0.Sterling1dc2.cw.net [206.24.238.34]
15 35 ms 277 ms 50 ms csr11-ve241.Sterling2dc3.cw.net [216.109.66.90]
16 36 ms 28 ms 37 ms 216.109.84.162
17 29 ms 29 ms 27 ms vl30.bas1-m.dcn.yahoo.com [216.109.120.142]
18 37 ms 28 ms 28 ms w13.
www.dcn.yahoo.com [216.109.125.66]
Anthony S.: That actually looks really good!
You: I'm not sure if that will tell you much though. As I said, it's mu upstream that is impaired, not the downstream.
Anthony S.: How about you run a trace route to the location you are trying to upload to.
Anthony S.: So the browsing itself is running fine?
You: Yes. Browsing is fine.
Anthony S.: It is just the upload.
You: Correct
Anthony S.: Alright, we will still do a few more things here.
You: I've tested this with numerous friends, and speed tests online as well
You: Hm?
Anthony S.: Please enter the modem model name, serial number (May be marked S/N), and MAC address (May be marked E/A) please. There will be a barcoded label on the modem with that information on it.
You: One moment while I look at the modem.
Anthony S.: Sure.
Anthony S.: Do you have any proxies setup in any of your upload programs?
You: No, I do not.
Anthony S.: As well, what are the programs you are using to upload from?
You: PCX1100U, SN: ***********, MAC: **-**-**-**-**-**
Anthony S.: Perfect!
You: Trillian is one of the programs I was using. It is an AOL compatible IM client.
Anthony S.: Finally, what we will have to do is run a normail speed test.
You: Hm?
URL Received:
http://subscribers.aroundcarolina.com/speedtest.asp
You: I'm running it now.
Anthony S.: Perfect, please let me know what the results are.
You: 11.4mb in 48 sec. 244/KB sec
You: Once again though, that is measuring downstream. Not upstream.
You: You'd only be able to see upstream if I were to run Apache or something over here and you try to get something from me.
Anthony S.: Yes, I realize that, they are just steps that I am required to take.
You: Okay. Just making sure.
You: =D
Anthony S.: Does the upload speed vary to the locations you are uploading to?
You: No, it is fairly steady in its slowness.
You: Typically, measuring by KBYTES, my upload used to max out at about 43KB per sec
You: now it maxes at around 5.5
Anthony S.: I was just talking to my supervisor to see what else we could do. There is really nothing more that we can do with the results that we just go. Even though they are the download speeds this indicates that you have a solid connection to the Road Runner network. The only other factor, I am being told, is to optomize the computer as best you can.
Anthony S.: Things like clearing clache, cookies, temp. files, etc.
Anthony S.: As well, running scandisks and defrags.
You: But those things don't influence upload speed.
You: This just started suddenly yesterday. I hadn't changed a thing when it happened.
You: You could possibly see what I'm talking about if I tried to send your bigfile.xyz test back to you via Instant Messenger, or if I hosted it on an apache http server and let you try to grab it back from me.
Anthony S.: Unfortunately that is not something that we have the ability to do here. I understand where you are coming from, but aside from the suggestions to optomize your system I am being told that there is nothing that we can do here.
You: Okay then. I'll keep checking around here, but I'm fairly certain that everything is in order on my side.
Anthony S.: Are there any other technical issues we may assist you with?
You: If it continues to be this way, even after connecting a different computer to the modem, would that be enough to convince you all that it's not a problem on my side?
Anthony S.: That is a very good step toward pinpointing the issue.
Anthony S.: if you do that and get back to us then we can look further into what the cause could be.
You: Okay then. I test that out. Is there a way I can reach you again instead of someone else, since you already know of the problem going on?
You: *I can test that out.
You: Sorry, typos.
Anthony S.: No, there is no way to reach me directly. You can, however, request the agent to see if I am available when you come back on.
You: Okay. Thank you.
Anthony S.: They may be able to transfer if I am in at that time, and if I am available.
Anthony S.: Are there any other technical issues we may assist you with?
You: No, that covers it.
Anthony S.: In an ongoing effort to continue improving our quality of service, we are conducting a customer survey. If you would like to participate, please copy and paste the following link into your browser:
http://help.rr.com/html/chatsurvey.html. If you have no further issues that we can assist you with, you may end the chat session by clicking on the Hang Up button. Once again thank you for choosing Road Runner!
Anthony S.: All the best.
You: Thanks
Anthony S. Has Disconnected
After making sure it wasn't just happening on this one computer, I came back and spoke with one more person. He wasn't any help, and he actually tried to BS me and tell me that their roadrunner "download a huge bmp image" speed test also tested upload speeds as well as download. He suggested waiting a few more days and if it was still like this, calling local tech support.