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I currently have a standard cable internet line in my apartment. I've had unreliable connection speeds in my apartment complex for as long as I could remember. Daily, we see speeds drop to as low as 2 megabits down despite the fact that our tier of broadband should be seeing at least 10-15. We have had technicians visit multiple times, but each time they say that the cable outlet is getting normal power/frequencies or whatever and don't do anything beyond that. My roommate and I were thinking about switching service providers, but my question is, would this really help? What if the problem is infrastructure related and my apartment complex is simply doomed for reliable internet speeds regardless of ISP? By the way, my current ISP is Cox if that helps at all.

Any input would be appreciated. Thanks!

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When you say "we see speeds drop to as low as 2 megabits down", what does that mean? Are you looking at the modem's internal monitoring and getting that number? Or are you going to a speed testing site? Or what? And what's the usual speeds you see, and the highest? (The most common reason people ask this question is because they're seeing speeds of 2MB/s, which is actually more than you'd expect for a 15Mbps connection.) – David Schwartz Jan 23 at 6:07
@DavidSchwartz We're using a speed testing site to test our connection, specifically speedtest.net. Every time we test we try at least two different servers and get consistent speeds with both of them. Normally we get between 10-12 Mb/s down and on really good days we get 18-20 Mb/s down. I understand the difference between Mb/s and MB/s. – Zanneth Jan 23 at 18:09
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closed as off topic by soandos, Randolph West, Sathya♦ Jan 23 at 7:55

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