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Comcast and Net Speed Tests

Posted by kdawson on from the mystery-but-in-a-good-way dept.

JimDaGeek writes "I recently moved to Columbia, SC where I have Time Warner as my cable ISP and pay for an 8 Mbps connection and have been very happy with the service, speed, and reliability. In contrast I have heard bad things about Comcast. So now that I am up in the Philadelphia PA area visiting my parents, I decided to test out the speed and reliability using the Speakeasy speed test. The results surprised me. Here are the reported download speeds in Kbps: New York, 18,946; Washington, 15,821; Atlanta, 11,257; Chicago, 10,042; San Francisco, 4,230. What is going on? I know my father is not paying for a 10+ Mbps connection. Is Comcast giving priority to popular speed-test sites?" From Comcast's site, in the Philadelphia area they seem to offer download speeds of 6 or 8 Mbps, with an option for a "PowerBoost" to 12 Mbps on large files. This wouldn't explain the results JimDaGeek got of almost 19 Mbps down.

Update: 07/10 12:07 GMT by KD : A friend in Massachusetts had a tree fall on his house. The Comcast guy who reconnected the lines told him that they are boosting the line speed to 20 Mbps down / 2 Mbps up in certain areas to be more competitive with Verizon FiOS.

5 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. Time of day? by carlivar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Since cable bandwidth is shared, wouldn't the time of the test matter? I've noted (very unscientifically) that my Internet seems slower between roughly 7-9pm (on Charter in Los Angeles area).

    --
    Vote Libertarian
    1. Re:Time of day? by catwh0re · · Score: 5, Insightful
      It also makes me think of how complicated the simple "bandwidth test" will be should net neutrality get thrown out the window.

      Already we juggle the factors of location, "paid for speed", shared bandwidth issues with daytime or peak traffic.. but then without some kind of neutrality we'd also be juggling whether or not the interconnects between yourself and the test site are all on a higher priority or lower priority pipe.(something we could never know)

      Today your ISP can blame a bit of the slowdowns on network conditions, but ultimately it's obvious if your ISP is a slower provider.. but in the future they'll be able to knowingly serve you slow speeds while claiming it's just the low-priority sites you may be visiting.

    2. Re:Time of day? by lancejjj · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Since cable bandwidth is shared, wouldn't the time of the test matter? FYI, practically all internet traffic traverses shared communication lines. The point-to-point connection of DSL becomes shared as soon as your local copper pair is squeezed onto a multiplexed line, within a few thousand feet of your home.
    3. Re:Time of day? by ivan256 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, and your cable connection uses a shared upstream connection once it reaches the CO too. The difference is that the "last-mile" connection is also shared. Either can become a bottleneck depending on traffic.

      Of course the internet traverses shared lines. That's practically the point of the internet.

  2. Re:SpeedTest.net by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    bandwidth != latency. You want both (high bandwidth and low latency, that is), but that doesn't make them equal.