Share Your Connection Speed

I rarely received the advertised speeds that Comcast states especially during "heavy" times. Since we upgraded our 5 Mbps DSL to 10 Mbps DSL a few months ago, I receive consistent speeds of between 9.7 to 9.9 Mbps download and always 875 Kbps upload. The internet package is $54.95/month with the bundled discount. Most speed tests that I have seen with Comcast on different forums are sometimes "skewed" due to PowerBoost since it works in short boosts.

 

I see your point about Comcast PowerBoost, which in my view is mainly marketing and not useful because of its fairly strict limitations. As you said, PowerBoost could distort the speed test results, since the tests are done with fairly small files, within the operating limits of PowerBoost. I can only add to this that I do get something close to my rated performance when downloading large files (Windows or OS X updates, for example). I haven't tried to measure this too precisely, but it's in the ballpark. Large downloads can also be inconsistent for may reasons, given possible bandwidth limits on the server end, server activity and the state of the intervening Internet.

I'm glad you are happy with DSL, although I'm sure this is different in different local areas. Even though I live in an urban area, I could never get satisfactory performance from the Verizon DSL line to my house (put in tech support calls for more than a year) and they lost a customer. I have been happy with Comcast.

It's well known that performance on cable systems can vary depending on activity in your neighborhood, since it is a shared-bandwidth system, before the signal gets back to the high-speed switches. I haven't been particularly affected by this, but I know it can happen.

Since peak speeds keep going up, it seems that the cable operators are using more of the cable capacity, or making more efficient use of the capacity. Does this make it more resistant to other neighborhood traffic? I'm not sure. Ultimately, bringing fiber to the home, as Verizon is doing with FIOS, is probably the best technical solution, but I'm not sure I would switch, even if it were available to me, which it isn't.


SW

 

My family and I found out that Comcast likes to put too many people on the same line in my area, and thus that is why we never had a consistent signal. It was always a hit or miss. Plus when we had analog cable, we noticed snow on the TV. Called Comcast and they said that there shouldn't be a problem (they didn't even send anyone here even though we requested a tech be sent to our home). About a month later, we switched to digital and noticed severe pixelation on more than a dozen channels. Called them and went through the same thing with them again. The next day, my dad and I took the digital box to Comcast and returned it. Called Embarq and got a phone/internet/Dish Network package and had them come out and install it after cancelling Comcast the day they installed our Dish. We have been very happy Dish and Embarq customers for over two years now.

 

Comcast likes doing that. They oversubcribe a node and usually don't do anything about it. I found this out working for them as one of their HSI tech support agents. I asked how about their network and they told me in some places, its just a mess. Not to mention what their field techs have done in the past. Glad you like Embarq as I heard a lot of horror stories about them. Have you had an incident with their NebuAd program. Ultimately, I still would not choose Comcast as they lied about using Sandvine technology, throttling, and putting invisible caps. Did you hear about the old lady who went to her local Comcast center and smashed up the place with a hammer because they were giving her the run around with her internet connection? My connection isn't any better, still the same:

 

here is mine with FIOS, they have been very steady as compared to Comcast.

Test via DC

Test with NY server:

 

Those numebrs for me are supposed to go up soon as Verizon has increased the speed to 20 up and 5 down. I was told that it will happen in a couple of weeks (to bad I will not be here to witness this.

 

All I care for is higher download speed, for business I need that big time and hopefully they don't come out one day and put a cap.

 

Re: ISP Speed Test - Post yours

This is my current internet that we upgraded to last year during the summer (my ping time has gone up but the upload and download speeds have increased since we upgraded to the 10 Mbps down/896 Kbps up package):

 

Re: ISP Speed Test - Post yours

This is what I have @ my new place:

 

Re: ISP Speed Test - Post yours

I have the 5 Mbps DSL package through Embarq. I've been very happy with my service and every speed test I have done shows the connection around a steady 5 Mbps with solid upload speeds as well. DSL is the only thing that I can get at my house but most people in my area seem to be much happier with Embarq DSL than Charter who is the more dominant cable provider in my area. I've heard some awful things about Charter in general and their cable modem service seems to be inconsistant.

 

Re: ISP Speed Test - Post yours

That is the package that what we used to have. In my neighborhood, our choices are either Comcast high-speed (which I hate due to problems with them in the past) or Embarq DSL. We have been Embarq customers for almost 2.5 years and have been happy with our service.

 

Re: ISP Speed Test - Post yours

Wow Jay. What internet package do you have?

 

I have the 1.5Mb download/512K upload DSL through Embarq. So far it has been sufficient for me. I think I am glad that I listened to the rep and not bought the 768K option.

 

Re: ISP Speed Test - Post yours

I've had Embarq DSL a year and I've been very happy with it. Embarq doesn't offer the 10 Mbps service in my area yet. If they do I haven't seen anybody with an address yet in this area that can get it at least. The fastest they offer is 5 Mbps, which is fine by me. The 5 Mbps package works fine for me so even if I was able to get the 10 Mbps package I wouldn't sign up for it.

 

Re: ISP Speed Test - Post yours

After my Speakeasy DSL has decided to drop me down from 6.0/768 to a measly 1.5/384 I went with Comcast Blast (advertised as 16Mbps). The results are below

 

Re: ISP Speed Test - Post yours

I don't know, my roommate is paying for it. Its internet from the cable company. That's all I know about it.

-Jay

 

Re: ISP Speed Test - Post yours

Cool. That is still a nice package. I wish I was able to get those speeds here.

 

Re: ISP Speed Test - Post yours

Well it is nice to have the 10 Mbps package since we download mp3's, play Xbox 360 online (me), stream shows via a Slingbox, and our study is also our business office.

 

I pay for the 1.5 down service which, pathetically is the fastest option available from my local phone company, and to beat that it's $80 a month.

 

Wow. That is expensive especially with those speeds. I would call your internet company and have them run a line test and see if they can improve your speeds since you are definitely not getting your advertised rate and your ping time is really high (especially if this test was done while directly connected to your modem).

 

I Love FIOS

 

My speed test over my new DLINK wireless-n router:

 

I don't know what's up with my DSL sppeds I have been getting these speeds:




I only signed up for 1.5M DSL but changed it to 3.0M which wont take effect until tomorrow. Nice to know that my internet connection is decent Does the wireless routers bump up the speed at all? I thought not

 

Those test are pretty bad Quint, look at Gamers, his test is a lot further away and has bigger pings. If it doesn't get better when your ramp up period is over, I would do a power cycle, and if its still bad, call in and have them check your line. Routers technically do not speed or slow down your, but more times than not, it will slow down your connection just a little bit. I learned from my CCNA classes that routers are like speed bumps. Every time your data encounters one, the router has to examine the packet and route it to its destination. Here's my speed over my new DGL-4500. I like the local speeds, especially over Gigabit Ethernet.

 

My pings are slightly higher since the best speed test that I have found is running a test through Atlanta. But I do agree that Quint's pings should be lower since the speed test is less than 50 miles away. Since he said that the speed isn't supposed to take effect until tomorrow then his modem could not have the proper sync speed in place to accurately display the correct speed.

I also recently upgraded to the DLINK DGL-4500 Gaming Router (almost a month ago) from the Belkin N1 Wireless-N Router. This router is excellent and I can even give IP addresses priority over other ones on my network so they will have more bandwidth available (my Xbox 360 has a priority of 1 and my Slingbox has a priority of 2).

 

Well, I did some more speed tests on the Speedtest site and I am still getting these possibly inaccurate speeds:

The earlier test (the one on the far right) seems to be the most reasonable despite the ping. I also tried the speed test on the Embarq site and I got 3999K download on the 1st test and on a 2nd test, I got 7096K down and 398k up. On the 3rd test, I got 6026k/370k. The pings were 94ms on the 1st 2 tests and 125ms on the last one.

So something is amiss, right? What should I ask data support? Will there be any fees?

 

That's exactly why I got the DGL-4500 for the priority of traffic, besides it having Gigabit. Quint, those are some bad pings still. Before you call, did they give you a specfic period that the speeds will be brought up to speed? I think with AT&T its something around 3 days. Wait about that long and try a power cycle before calling. Also, try this speed test, ndt2.stanford.edu NDT server When you call if it comes down to it, just tell the tech support that your seeing high pings on your line and you tired a power cycle. They might make you power cycle again and then finally run a test on your line. If you want you can check this forum over at dslreports Embarq forum - dslreports.com broadband community They might be able to help you more.