Comcast Cheating On Bandwidth Testing?

dynamo52 writes "I'm a freelance network admin serving mainly small business clients. Over the last few months, I have noticed that any time I run any type of bandwidth testing for clients with Comcast accounts, the results have been amazingly fast — with some connections, Speakeasy will report up to 15 Mbps down and 4 Mbps up. Of course, clients get nowhere near this performance in everyday usage. (This can be quite annoying when trying to determine whether a client needs to switch over to a T1 or if their current ISP will suffice.) Upon further investigation, it appears that Comcast is delivering this bandwidth only for a few seconds after any new request and it is immediately throttled down. Doing a download and upload test using a significantly large file (100+ MB) yields results more in line with everyday usage experience, usually about 1.2 Mbps down and about 250 Kbps up (but it varies). Is there any valid reason why Comcast would front-load transfers in this way, or is it merely an effort to prevent end-users from being able to assess their bandwidth accurately? Does anybody know of other ISPs using similar practices?"

Comments

Crumcast...

[flajann]

What can I say? Switch to Fios if you can!

I've had my Fios Fibre-optic connection for over a year now, and unlike everything else I've had before -- including Crumcast -- Fios has been fast and trouble-free. I can sustain the 5Mb down and the 2Mb up without a hitch, and I've tested this with BitTorrent, of all things.

It's so good, in fact, that it's been exposing problems with my Netgear Wireless Router RangeMax -- I don't think they'd figured on someone sustaining that kind of bandwidth. So it's time for me to upgrade!!!!!!

If you don't have Fios in your area, SCREAM at Verizon. I mean, I've always despised Verizon up till they delivered on Fios. What a rare occasion for a large otherwise stuck-in-the-mud bureauractic company to -- finally -- get it right. And you can't beat the 5/2 service at $40 a month. I was paying twice that for Crumcast!!!!

Fios TV is avaliable in some areas if you still find anything interesting to watch in that medium. For you lucky chums, you'll be able to nuke Crumcast entirely. No idea how good Fios TV is, since I threw out that particle accelerator long ago...