A press release with a date of 04/22/2014 states that Time Warner Cable Begins Major Internet Speed Increases in Los Angeles and New York City. In the press release there is the line "TWC has boosted speeds for all its residential Internet plans in ... areas of Woodside (in Queens) and Staten Island in New York City." This is good as TWC looks to be making actual progress on these upgrades in NYC. TWC also posted a couple months ago a YouTube video titled TWC Techs Launch 300 Mbps Internet Speeds at Queens, NY, Hub | Time Warner Cable so they are touting their TWC Maxx progress.
But I want more information about which neighborhoods have been updated besides Woodside and SI; which ones will be next to get the TWC Maxx upgrade, and when this will happen in specific neighborhoods?
There is very little information on the TWC Upgrade progress, but I found a TWC Untangled blog post discussing the NYC TWC Maxx upgrade where a Jay Gormley (TWC Director, Content Production) states:
Just a friendly heads up. We’re getting several comments asking when “TWC Maxx” is coming to a specific neighborhood or community in LA and NYC. We truly appreciate your enthusiasm and we are working hard to make sure both markets are completely upgraded by the end of 2014. So the best answer we can offer is that our goal is to have all neighborhoods in the NYC and LA markets transitioned to “TWC Maxx” within the next five months.This is a start but it is vague and could mean anywhere between now and Feb 2015. To get a tighter estimate I emailed TWCable.Help@twcable.com (an email address listed on the TWC Untangled page) asking when I can expect TWC Maxx in my Greenwich Village neighborhood. I did get a reply! But it was also vague; "Melissa O." stated that such specific information is not available at this time and that I will receive notification prior to the upgrade (through email or on monthly statement) in the instance I may need to upgrade my equipment.
Continuing my research online to get more hard information I found sporadic mentions of people getting their TWC Maxx upgrade in the NYC area. The site with the most information about actual TWC users getting the upgrade seems to be the forum postings on AVS Forum. New York City TWC customers are posting there if they have received the upgrade and are getting faster service and what zip code they are in. There are many Manhattan zip codes listed, one of the posts:
Originally Posted by Carlos_EFrom what I have found online and searching twitter it appears the TWC Maxx roll out is happening in a North to South and West to East kind of way and parts of Manhattan have it already.
Time Warner MAXX availability by zip code
I have the updated speed and reside in 10026
- Astoria NY 11102, 11103
- Long Island City,NY 11106, 11101
- Woodside, NY 11377
- Sunnyside 11104
- New York, NY 10030, 10128, 10028, 10035, 10022, 10021
- Flushing, NY 11355
- Elmhurst, NY 11373
- Jackson Heights, NY 11372
- E. Elmhurst, NY 11370
But I want to have an idea of when I can expect the upgrade. Is it imminent? Will I have to wait until 2015? The lack of detail from TWC is a real drag. People in Austin figured out who was getting the TWC Maxx upgrade by neighborhood, can this be done in NYC too? Why not, just takes some analysis I think. From this TWC press release "Time Warner Cable to Transform TV and Internet Experience in New York City and Los Angeles" there is this meaty paragraph:
As Time Warner Cable embraces new network performance standards company wide, the first phase of this initiative in NYC and L.A. will include a stringent review and upgrade of every network connection site (referred to as hubs) to ensure optimum service levels are delivered to every neighborhood. Each TWC hub serves thousands of customers with phone, video and data services. The first four hubs to receive upgrades are those that service customers in West Hollywood and Costa Mesa in California, and portions of Woodside (in Queens) and Staten Island in New York. The Company will complete its transformation of the customer experience in both major markets by year-end. As each hub site upgrade is completed, TWC’s Internet customers in every tier of service served by those hubs will see substantial upload and download speed increases.The TWC Maxx roll out will be hub-by-hub. So what are the hubs in New York City? And which hub am I on? And when is that hub scheduled to get updated?
Searching the web I found at that the TWC Woodside hub is called the Woodside Headend and that there is a "Hub Site C" in Manhattan (I found this page which linked to this page which linked to this PDF on "DATA CENTER EFFICIENCY PROGRAM") which had this paragraph:
To meet this increased demand, Time Warner Cable is growing the capacity of one of their most active sites, Hub Site C, by building out approximately 14,800 square feet of raised floor data center space on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The new, full 2N structured Tier 4 facility, dubbed “Super C”, will be three times larger than the current Hub Site CIf there is a "Hub Site C" that implies there is a "Hub Site A" and "Hub Site B", maybe a "Hub Site D" and so on? Trying to find info on these hubs I came across the URL "https://www.twcnyc.com/". The site is old and appears to have not been updated in several years but it had some TWC network topology info that is probably still accurate (see the network topology at the Google cached page here). The info for Manhattan:
- Hub Site A in Midtown
- Hub Site B in the UWS
- Hub Site C in the UES
- 111 8th Avenue (the Google building)
- 60 Hudson (a big colocation site)
- 25 Broadway
I wanted to find out more about which hub site I am routed to. The site DSL Reports site has a community thread that discusses how you can determine which hub or headend you are on. It involves running a traceroute (or tracert on Windows DOS) from the command line. I did this and here are my results:
C:\>tracert dslreports.com Tracing route to dslreports.com [64.91.255.98]Looks like my hub is at 111 8th Avenue. I do not know if that TWC hub site has been updated or when it will be updated. Google is in that building so it has to be an impressive facility in terms of network gear and capacity. So hopefully that hub is next in line for the TWC Maxx update and then I'll get the speed boost. Also note that Comcast is in the mix in my traceroute results, they haven't even merged yet but the peering happens at 111 it appears.
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms HomeRouter [#.#.#.#]
2 19 ms 16 ms 15 ms cpe-#-#-#-#.nyc.res.rr.com [#.#.#.#]
3 17 ms 21 ms 18 ms tge-0-0-0-0.nycmnyd-rtr02.nyc.rr.com [68.173.214.41]
4 12 ms 15 ms 19 ms agg58.nyquny9101r.nyc.rr.com [184.152.112.91]
5 12 ms 19 ms 15 ms 107.14.19.22
6 15 ms 24 ms 17 ms 107.14.17.216
7 11 ms 17 ms 11 ms te-0-7-0-21-pe02.111eighthave.ny.ibone.comcast.net [66.208.216.49]
8 16 ms 14 ms 16 ms 68.86.84.237
9 35 ms 38 ms 52 ms he-0-11-0-0-cr01.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.86.226]
10 42 ms 38 ms 48 ms pos-0-13-0-0-pe01.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.87.250]
11 39 ms 43 ms 39 ms 50.242.150.126
12 39 ms 44 ms 42 ms lw-core5.rtr.liquidweb.com [209.59.157.244]
13 46 ms 44 ms 40 ms 69.167.128.241
14 43 ms 45 ms 39 ms www.dslreports.com [64.91.255.98]
According to the website "Stop the Cap!" it heard from people in Queens when they got the upgrade a few months ago. Stop the Cap says the first notification that your area is about to receive the TWC Maxx upgrade will come in a letter from Time Warner Cable and they posted a copy of a letter a Queens TWC customer received notifying them of the upgrade. Another letter here.
I have not yet received a letter, looking forward to getting it.
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