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

I do remote support, & COMCAST = F A S T!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Daily, on the job professionally (fixing folks' computer woes via remote support) I see a lot of folks from various ISP/BSP's nationally in the U.S.A. (continental, & offshore like Canadians & Hawaiians)... & I get to "compare" the performances of each:

COMCAST does rank up there with the fastest, IF NOT CONSISTENTLY the fastest overall!

(Judging just by "feel" though, mind you (& it's the MOST important thing really), with myself as the remote desktop support person doing the job on client systems via WEBEX remotely).

Whatever they're doing, imo & experience, they're doing it RIGHT!

Corpsoratist and Polliticians are morality twins.

[OldHawk777]

CorpUSoratist and Polltiticians (spelling intentional) are morality twins.

Why tell the truth, when a lie is far more self-serving and profitable.

Morality for most of both perverts is always identical: (1) to the victor go the spoils, and (2) forget the dead-beat losers.

Gods must love CorpUSoratist and Polltiticians, because they ain't accountable or responsible for anything more than a blowjob, hubris, and demagogic legacy mythology (Stalin, Mao, Caesar, Napoleon, JFK, Reagan ...). Humanity, their culture/art/science, nation collective has a legacy and destiny; However, individuals, families, and friends have a past, but never a future beyond the grave, even when they believe they are immortal gods, or historical immortal rulers of hysterical immorality.