I've had Comcast for the past 5 or so years and never really had a problem. My connection has been solid - I would guess around a 95-97% uptime and the speeds have been consistent as well...until recently.
About a month ago I signed up for Vonage, connected it to the home network and it worked great. Call quality was perfect, no drop out, no jitter, absolutely no packet loss - it was a thing of beauty.
Last week I started to notice my network was slowing down - dramatically. I checked all of the usual sources, no Bittorrent/p2p, no viri/worms, almost no activity on the LAN. I cracked out Ethereal and started sniffing, no real interesting traffic - actually not much traffic at all. I ran some speed tests from DSLreports and was getting ridiculously low numbers, we're talking about ~900/120 and I believe my service is 6000/384 (it might be 4000/384). I ran some Speakeasy speed tests and got better numbers ~1400/190 but still a far cry from what is 'promised' and what I have been getting. I tend to rely pretty lightly on these speed tests because of many factors out of my control, but this was way off, and the results replicated themselves multiple times, multiple locations, during different parts of the day. Obviously the VOIP started to suffer and the home phone was unusable, you couldn't decipher anything.
It had been a while since I updated the FW on my Linksys, so I cruised over to DD-WRT and grabbed their latest v23 and performed a clean update - factory reset. After setting up the router to my liking, I went back to the speed tests. Same results. I know it wouldn't really help in this case, but enabling QoS actually made the results much worse. With my PC connected directly to the cable modem the results were exactly the same.
I finally broke down and called Comcast and spoke with one of their Tier 1 guys, who basically reset my router, did a traceroute, and some pings and finally told me that was all he could do and would send someone out to take a look. So we'll see what happens tomorrow when the Comcast guy comes out.
I'm not trying to insinuate that Comcast has been monitoring my traffic for SIP/h.323 packets and throttled my connection, but it's this kind of weirdness that makes you wonder.
Verizon is running fiber in my neighborhood right now, and the second it's available I'm dumping Comcast for good. I'll get television, internet and phone thorough my very own piece of fiber
I thought the Steganalysis was extinct...that's public school education for you.
TiVo Cable/Satellite DVR
on
TiVo to Offer SDK
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I have Comcast and have tried their version of the DVR, and there is absolutely no comparison between that and TiVo. There's no doubt that the cable/satellite companies have 'mastered' recording of shows, but half of TiVo is the UI, and it's simplicity. The Comcast DVR that I had was horrendous. It was slow, difficult to use, froze, crashed, etc, etc, etc. I had it for a week and sent it back. I then bought another refurbished TiVo, threw 2, 80 GB hard drives in there and I'm back in business and I'm never going back.
I would love to see the ability to transfer shows from one TiVo to another across my network (similar to the ReplayTV units of yesteryear). It would be awesome to pull a show from another TiVo to watch elsewhere in the house. If the boys in legal can figure out a way to appease the suits, it would be the next revolution in television viewing. I also think the ability to record one show and watch another is crucial. The satellite TiVo units have that functionality, but I want it extended to all TiVo's. If they start adding functionality like that, it might give them the boost they need.
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I've had Comcast for the past 5 or so years and never really had a problem. My connection has been solid - I would guess around a 95-97% uptime and the speeds have been consistent as well...until recently.
About a month ago I signed up for Vonage, connected it to the home network and it worked great. Call quality was perfect, no drop out, no jitter, absolutely no packet loss - it was a thing of beauty.
Last week I started to notice my network was slowing down - dramatically. I checked all of the usual sources, no Bittorrent/p2p, no viri/worms, almost no activity on the LAN. I cracked out Ethereal and started sniffing, no real interesting traffic - actually not much traffic at all. I ran some speed tests from DSLreports and was getting ridiculously low numbers, we're talking about ~900/120 and I believe my service is 6000/384 (it might be 4000/384). I ran some Speakeasy speed tests and got better numbers ~1400/190 but still a far cry from what is 'promised' and what I have been getting. I tend to rely pretty lightly on these speed tests because of many factors out of my control, but this was way off, and the results replicated themselves multiple times, multiple locations, during different parts of the day. Obviously the VOIP started to suffer and the home phone was unusable, you couldn't decipher anything.
It had been a while since I updated the FW on my Linksys, so I cruised over to DD-WRT and grabbed their latest v23 and performed a clean update - factory reset. After setting up the router to my liking, I went back to the speed tests. Same results. I know it wouldn't really help in this case, but enabling QoS actually made the results much worse. With my PC connected directly to the cable modem the results were exactly the same.
I finally broke down and called Comcast and spoke with one of their Tier 1 guys, who basically reset my router, did a traceroute, and some pings and finally told me that was all he could do and would send someone out to take a look. So we'll see what happens tomorrow when the Comcast guy comes out.
I'm not trying to insinuate that Comcast has been monitoring my traffic for SIP/h.323 packets and throttled my connection, but it's this kind of weirdness that makes you wonder.
Verizon is running fiber in my neighborhood right now, and the second it's available I'm dumping Comcast for good. I'll get television, internet and phone thorough my very own piece of fiber
Check this out, the US Capital Building congressional offices in Washington are totally obscured...d +1st+street,washington,+dc&ll=38.891006,-77.008873 &spn=0.008444,0.010664&t=k&hl=en
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=constitution+ave+an
It's the same with KeyHole as well (screenshot):
http://www.allbootdisks.com/images/keyhole.jpg
Is keyhole doing this to all 'sensitive' targets?
I hope that Comcast does not 'adapt' the TiVo software too much. Too much adaptation, and you'll have another useless Comcast DVR!
I thought the Steganalysis was extinct...that's public school education for you.
I would love to see the ability to transfer shows from one TiVo to another across my network (similar to the ReplayTV units of yesteryear). It would be awesome to pull a show from another TiVo to watch elsewhere in the house. If the boys in legal can figure out a way to appease the suits, it would be the next revolution in television viewing. I also think the ability to record one show and watch another is crucial. The satellite TiVo units have that functionality, but I want it extended to all TiVo's. If they start adding functionality like that, it might give them the boost they need.