Comcast Just Doubled My Internet Speed!

Hardware Hub Tech Policy & News
1

I'm super excited that I now get double my internet speed!

 

Check out my video of me using my new super fast internet! Pages load so fast now! Too bad videos seem to have more problems. Perhaps my internet is too fast to play videos well? I heard something about how the bitrate being too high can cause stuttering and stuff. That's what my new speed is right? I'm not that good at all this technology stuff. But perhaps when YouTube improves their video bitrates videos will play speedily again.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=fko2TXCOi8o

 

 

In all seriousness though, I used to get 25 Mbps, and I haven't had any problems with Comcast for what seems like five years now. I determined that my internet was struggling due to the router and modem I had been renting was always terrible no matter how many times they changed it out. After changing it out, I haven't had any problems since, until now. Now I'm supposed to get 50 Mbps, I was hesitant to post this video as I actually felt a little loyal to Comcast, despite the fact I have experienced the issues The Tek has described (with proper hardware I hand picked) first hand at other locations with Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner. I had never been throttled at my home, and I thought the issues I was getting were due to teething issues with the speed increase. I have even gone so far as to recommend them in this area (the only other option is AT&T U-Verse which gives about 120 Kbps on their 24 Mbps package no matter what you do) so long as one buys their own network hardware.

 

But after nearly four days of sitting here twiddling my thumbs watching 144p videos on YouTube with tons of buffering (which as you can see in the video says "HD Verified"), nonexistent performance on Netflix (despite the fact they're actually paying Comcast I thought) and refreshing pages multiple times just to get them to load properly (things are completely timing out)... I'm feeling it's a little more deliberate than teething issues, a lot more.

 

I've pretty much concluded the following:

  1. Speedtest.net ignores all following rules. It always loads fast and gives me results that exceed what I'm paying for.
  2. If the website serves video content primarily, the website is throttled.
  3. If the website uses a Content Delivery Network, the website is throttled.
  4. If the website loads any resources from a Content Delivery Network, that resource is throttled.

 

What this means is websites that do not load external resources very commonly (stock installs of forum software like an old archive of one of my websites here: legacy.elementtown.com) work extremely snappy and have no problems. Websites that do load external resources from a Content Delivery Network (like my resume page which only loads fonts from Adobe TypeKit, but still resides on the same physical server with no Content Deliver Network between you and the server) hang on the loading of those external resources for several minutes. Finally, the big one: the ads on most pages don't load very often despite the fact I do not use adblock most of the time, and add to the time it takes other resources to download (they all seem to be on the same virtual needle they're using in place of the pipe I pay for).

 

Before this "Doubling" of my internet speed, I had none of such issues. I used Quality of Service rules on my router to ensure that videos didn't get held back by downloads, and to ensure that video data didn't hold back my game packets, etc... But now when I watch my bandwidth use by my entire house it never spikes to anywhere close to even 1 Mbps (probably because everything is throttled except very obscure websites)! So with that, I guess that means back to getting harassed on the phone by Comcast customer support, and scheduling more tech visits, because apparently I'm not smart enough to plug things in properly, my perfect signal to noise ratio mandates replacement of some caps on some cables somewhere in my house that were replaced last visit and fix nothing, and ultimately getting nowhere. At least I'll get $20 credit on my bill for something I'm paying for but not getting anyway?

2

Yes Comcast just doubled their speeds.

3

This was along time ago though

4

try this. its better than speedtest, since it hits multiple servers at the same time.

http://testmy.net/

5

They doubled them about a week ago for the bay area.

6

A day after I posted the video, the speedtest.net results became better and better. I'm able to consistently get 58 Mbps down and 6 Mbps up. But I am having even more issues now since the video recording, and even more now since I made the post. I was having absolutely no issues connecting to my own server, but now I'm even getting throttled to that it seems as I was able to download and upload to that box at nearly full speed until tonight.

Also note that the speedtest.net results, while (in the video) nowhere near the 50 Mbps (or even the 25 Mbps I was actually getting before), would still result in a completely usable internet. Even now, I am actually able to get the 50 Mbps to the speedtest.net servers, and using your testmy.net website gives me around 40 Mbps down/4 Mbps up: both would be perfectly usable. To just watch videos and play games all day simultaneously, even 10 Mbps would be fine and provide a flawless experience, so I have no problems with getting slightly less. I am getting 40%+ outbound packet loss to all my favorite websites, and with 5 Mbps upload with no packet loss, 40% loss would affect the speed far more than just 1 Mbps, yet I get perfect results to all speedtest websites (their websites load faster with a latency of over 500ms to deliver the webpage than a webserver that I built and host in a local datacenter with a history of latency at 14ms for echos and 30ms for delivering the html).

Edit: Packet loss has recovered: 0% like it was yesterday. However, I'm still being throttled in general it seems and cannot actually use the internet properly despite my overall bandwidth across my house being less than a megabit per second. Feels like 1995 with better graphics over here.

7

Ah, they did this along time ago for the Northeast.

8

I would switch internet providers, or try a VPN

9

Everything is throttled, including the VPNs.

10

They caught you torrenting loads of illegal porn and movies.

11

Ah thats too bad man, im glad I dont get throttled. i hope you can find your problem. My brother works for Comcast so he hooks me up with a nice connection, thank god for that.

12

Well! I had also watched the Comcast doubling the internet speed.Thanks. I always prefer to check my internet speed at  ScanMySpeed.com website which is more reliable.