Blind Bandit Posted January 31, 2009 Report Share Posted January 31, 2009 Well I thought for one Comcast was turning around its act. I have Comcast here and ever sense they upgraded speeds in my location. I've noticed the Internet seems to be a lot more reliable and it seems the slows downs were going to stop. I also thought Comcast wasn't going to throttle downloads anymore. But after a day or two of heavy downloading (not me a roommate) our speed was cut down to maybe under half our rated speed. It seems Comcast is still bringing down the hammer on heavy users. It may have been our package I think we are on the lowest package. I don't know if this kind of limiting would happen if you where to buy the 50/10 package at 130 plus dollars. Its tomes like this I wish they would roll out Verizon FiOS in our neighborhood but sadly Comcast has a pretty good grip on our area. I wish the telecos would just upgrade there infrastructure already. I know it would be nice to have fiber. We are pathetic compared to a many other industrialized countries. You would think the USA would be leading in Internet speed. Ok Internet rant over... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael D. Posted January 31, 2009 Report Share Posted January 31, 2009 FiOS would indeed be very nice to have I agree. No problems with my Comcast however... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blind Bandit Posted January 31, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 31, 2009 FiOS would indeed be very nice to have I agree. No problems with my Comcast however... I don't know it might have been a random problem that wasn't really our fault but it just seemed to kinda of odd. Mike do you have Comcast home or business class? I've heard that the business is a little less restrictive. I made the very bad joke to my roomates that we simply need to cough up at least 2k for 100mbit line from someone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iansltx Posted February 1, 2009 Report Share Posted February 1, 2009 I don't know it might have been a random problem that wasn't really our fault but it just seemed to kinda of odd. Mike do you have Comcast home or business class? I've heard that the business is a little less restrictive. I made the very bad joke to my roomates that we simply need to cough up at least 2k for 100mbit line from someone. Well, ya could get Cogent for $600 + loop fees...if they're in the area... As to Comcast's interfering with traffic, they will deprioritize you if the node is congested and you're using more than 70% of your rated speed over the last 15 minutes. In order to get out from under this slowness blanket, you have to make your usage over the last 15 minutes under 50% of your rated speed. Upstream and downstream are measured independently. Additionally, Comcast, if you're not in a DOCSIS 3 area, only has 38 Mbps of download speed and 10 or 30 Mbps (usually 10) of upload speed to share between a hundred (or two) customers. Not so hot. In DOCSIS 3 areas, you get 3-4x that, which is good, but you can still be bottlenecked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blind Bandit Posted February 1, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 1, 2009 Well, ya could get Cogent for $600 + loop fees...if they're in the area... As to Comcast's interfering with traffic, they will deprioritize you if the node is congested and you're using more than 70% of your rated speed over the last 15 minutes. In order to get out from under this slowness blanket, you have to make your usage over the last 15 minutes under 50% of your rated speed. Upstream and downstream are measured independently. Additionally, Comcast, if you're not in a DOCSIS 3 area, only has 38 Mbps of download speed and 10 or 30 Mbps (usually 10) of upload speed to share between a hundred (or two) customers. Not so hot. In DOCSIS 3 areas, you get 3-4x that, which is good, but you can still be bottlenecked. I also thought it might have been congestion. As we have two choices here where I live DSL or cable. I'm in a newly upgraded DOCSIS 3 area. They made a big deal out of it too. Thats part of why its so frustrating they pump up their speeds while only a little while ago they where complaining how little capacity they had. They need to just bite the built and do a bigger build out to increase capacity if they want to sell at the speeds they are offering. Thats the issue though is Comcast is supposed to have a pretty decent network. If you stay on the back bone and are not using the customer end its probably better. I mean ****** if Softlayer, FDC, and others are buying or peering with Comcast they can't be that bad? I would guess Comcast just oversold their cable costumer a little much. Its funny there still clinging to cable. Granted fiber wouldn't help them unless they upped capacity in their nodes. I wonder how Verizon deals with this? I think part of the problem in area at least if you want anything faster than DSL you have Comcast or you pay out the teeth for a commercial line. As for paying 600 bucks for Cognet, nope. I don't know how much better it would be. But paying that kind of money might as well go with a quality provider. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iansltx Posted February 2, 2009 Report Share Posted February 2, 2009 I also thought it might have been congestion. As we have two choices here where I live DSL or cable. What's DSL like? Here (in the middle of town pretty much) DSL is limited to, realistically, about 4.2 Mbit/s down and 700 kbps up. Makes DOCSIS 1.1 Comcast look downright rosy. I'm in a newly upgraded DOCSIS 3 area. They made a big deal out of it too. Thats part of why its so frustrating they pump up their speeds while only a little while ago they where complaining how little capacity they had. They need to just bite the built and do a bigger build out to increase capacity if they want to sell at the speeds they are offering. Ah, but that requires competition. Again, DOCSIS 1.1 here since Qwest isn't providing said competition. They also technically still don't have the capacity to let everyone go up to their 250GB cap Thats the issue though is Comcast is supposed to have a pretty decent network. If you stay on the back bone and are not using the customer end its probably better. Meh, they allow switching to Level3 and maybe Qwest here in Denver, however everything else gets routed to New York, Chicago and (mostly) L.A., through their network. Anything that routes through L.A. is an automatic 40-50 ms penalty in latency, which sucks rather mightily, unless you're in L.A. Even then, the route taken by Comcast goes all the way down to south Texas. Not fun. Comcast definitely routes for cost when you're not dealing with either their own network or, say, Level3 in Denver (pretty much Level3's home turf). I mean ****** if Softlayer, FDC, and others are buying or peering with Comcast they can't be that bad? The main reason those guys have Comcast is a) It's probably dirt cheap/free; Comcast would like to have free peering with everyone so they don't have to pay transit costs, which are low for them anyway but zero is really nice. As such, if Comcast can get peopl eusing their iBone they don't have to pay for bandwidth between a datacenter and their own network, which could save them tens of thousands of dollars. On the other end, datacenters get cheap bandwidth, maybe free, and low-latency access to Comcast's customer base, which is quite large. Win-win, unless you're using Comcast to route the majority of traffic. SoftLayer doesn't do this...their bandwidth mix is pretty awesome. FDC on the other hand tends to do exactly that around here. I would guess Comcast just oversold their cable costumer a little much. Its funny there still clinging to cable. Granted fiber wouldn't help them unless they upped capacity in their nodes. I wonder how Verizon deals with this? Comcast's real problems with capacity are at the node level (the "last mile"), not really on their backbone network, which is gigabit at the edges and 10-40 Gbit (mostly 40 I think) in the middle, with 100 Gbit coming soon-to-now. Contrast this with Nx38/Nx30 or 38/10 Mbps per 125-250 customers at the subscriber level and you see the problem. Yes, fiber would help, but it's expensive. Wondering how much fiber would help? 2.4 Gbps down, 1.2 Gbps up using current technology, 622 Mbps down, 155 Mbps up with older tech. For 32 customers. That's why Verizon can offer mind-bending speeds with no caps and throttling. Because they have the capacity on the last mile. I think part of the problem in area at least if you want anything faster than DSL you have Comcast or you pay out the teeth for a commercial line. Some cable companies are rather awesome. Charter, not known for its amazingness, will be offering 20/2 internet soon, and 60/5 for the speed-starved. OptimumOnline will probably rathet speeds up to 50/5 and beyond...they're 30/5 right now. Insight is 20/1.5 for $50 per month. Pretty cool... As for paying 600 bucks for Cognet, nope. I don't know how much better it would be. But paying that kind of money might as well go with a quality provider. It's a 100 Mbps symmetric connection. With that kind of capacity, you should be able to download secently no matter what. Maybe not top speed to every site, but lots of places use Cogent for bandwidth, and as such you'll get nice throughput. It's not that they have a bad network, it's just that they don't get along too well with companies who want to sell stuff at a much, much higher price. For $600 per month, you'd be lucky to get a 10 Mbps connection (symmetric) from another provider. Unless you wanted business cable :/ Or had FiOS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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