Faster Comcast

[BEHR655]

The internet just got faster with comcast.

Important Speed Increase Update

Just when you thought the internet couldn't get any faster, Comcast High-Speed Internet brings it to you with more blazing speeds than ever before.
Over the coming weeks Comcast will be upgrading all of our High-Speed Internet Service customers from 3Mbps downstream and 256Kbps upstream to speeds as fast as 4Mbps downstream and 384Kbps upstream - at no additional change.

The following cities are scheduled to receive this upgrade on January 26th, 2005. If your location is not listed below, check back again soon.

Please do not contact Comcast to find out when your city will receive the upgrade, as our customer service representatives have no additional information.

All Comcast customers are scheduled to receive this upgrade by March 31st, 2005.

Comcast users should have gotten an e-mail on this subject. If you didn't just power down your modem for 1 minute. It said Mac users need to power down the modem and re-start their computer.

 

[Teegate]

All of our accounts recieved this message. The letter I recieved mentioned that the upload speed would NOT increase.

I will read it over more closely.

Guy

 

[Boyd]

Hmm, I read about this somewhere else but never received anything from comcast. Or maybe I did but I just deleted it like the other stuff they send about exciting new things at comcast

Over the past couple months my comcast service has gotten slower and slower actually. I tried powering down the modem and restarting my mac as you describe, but it seems slower than ever tonight. Maybe Medford won't get the upgrade until later?

Unfortunately where I live Verizon DSL isn't available. I have setup several connections with them and have been very happy. The top speed is not as good as comcast, but in practical terms it seems faster these days. Right now I'd switch back to Verizon in a heartbeat if it were available for me, am getting frustrated with comcast. It's funny Guy, you post links to a lot of pictures that are stored in your Comcast webspace. These photos load even slower than photos on other servers, even though we're both on comcast!

 

[Teegate]

It's funny Guy, you post links to a lot of pictures that are stored in your Comcast webspace. These photos load even slower than photos on other servers, even though we're both on comcast!

That is true at times, and there are times when they won't even load. I don't know what is up with that

I will be trying to use my new Gallery from Ben for most of my photo's since I am running out of space on my Comcast accounts. I would have to use my daughters next, and I don't want their account names known, so I was getting worried.

I turned off the modem tonight and booted back up, so we shall see what happens. I won't notice the speed with web pages loading since my computer is not the fastest, but I may with the downloads.

Guy

 

[bobpbx]

Over the past couple months my comcast service has gotten slower and slower actually. I tried powering down the modem and restarting my mac as you describe, but it seems slower than ever tonight. Maybe Medford won't get the upgrade until later?

Boyd, have you ever downloaded and ran any of those spyware and adblocker programs? My service was a little slow 3 months ago and that improved it. Another thing that was slowing me down was norton antivirus. I got sick of that program and took it off. It seems the risk of not having it is worth it. My computer would just sit and spin at times because it wanted to do things in the background all the time.

 

[Teegate]

Boyd, have you ever downloaded and ran any of those spyware and adblocker programs? My service was a little slow 3 months ago and that improved it. Another thing that was slowing me down was norton antivirus. I got sick of that program and took it off. It seems the risk of not having it is worth it. My computer would just sit and spin at times because it wanted to do things in the background all the time.

Bob,

He mentions in his post he has a Mac so the risk of a Virus or Spyware is very very minimal. In my case I do not even run Virus software. I have never heard of Spyware for Mac so that also is minimal.

The PC user's on this site who are annoyed by these type of things might want to think about leaving the dark side and coming into the light. I know Ben is thinking about it!

http://www.apple.com/macmini/

http://www.apple.com/imac/

Guy

 

[Boyd]

Thanks for the suggestions Bob, but Guy is right. And I see the performance decrease using other internet services like SSH and FTP as well. I was initially very happy with Comcast, and their service is certainly top notch when there are connectivity problems. But I'm pretty sure I'm just seeing a slowdown due to more users in my area. Eventually I'll probably take the time to have a chat with their tech support to see if my leg of the network can be managed more efficiently. I tried this via e-mail but they said it would require a phone call.

Apple really is on a roll now (disclaimer: I'm a very happy shareholder ). Rumor is that Best Buy will start selling the Mac Mini soon. I've recently convinced a couple friends to switch to the Mac and they are just delighted. Here are a few reviews of the Mini which might be of interest:

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050128/tech_test_mac_mini_2.html
http://www.forbes.com/technology/fe...9197924208602.ew.html?partner=yahoo&referrer=
http://www.forbes.com/technology/fe...8962918306443433.html?partner=yahoo&referrer=

 

[Teegate]

Thanks for the suggestions Bob, but Guy is right. And I see the performance decrease using other internet services like SSH and FTP as well. I was initially very happy with Comcast, and their service is certainly top notch when there are connectivity problems. But I'm pretty sure I'm just seeing a slowdown due to more users in my area. Eventually I'll probably take the time to have a chat with their tech support to see if my leg of the network can be managed more efficiently. I tried this via e-mail but they said it would require a phone call.

Apple really is on a roll now (disclaimer: I'm a very happy shareholder ). Rumor is that Best Buy will start selling the Mac Mini soon. I've recently convinced a couple friends to switch to the Mac and they are just delighted. Here are a few reviews of the Mini which might be of interest:

They are using the mini to draw PC users who go to the Apple store to purchase an iPod and are thinking about buying a Mac. They can keep their old keyboards, mouse, and monitor, and for $500 they are up and running.

Or someone like me who has the 450 Sawtooth and for $500 I can upgrade.

Guy

 

[Ben Ruset]

I get little speed increases from Verizon all the time.

Soon Verizon is going to be releasing a new product. Fibre direct into your house. At least 5MB down/2MB up. They're going to be offering phone and TV over the connection as well.

Goodbye dish network...

 

[bobpbx]

Is there a way I can tell what speed I download at?

 

[BEHR655]

Is there a way I can tell what speed I download at?

Yes.

 

[Teegate]

Is there a way I can tell what speed I download at?

There are quite a few of them to choose, and here are three of them.

http://www.pcpitstop.com/internet/Bandwidth.asp

http://www.pcpitstop.com/internet/default.asp

http://reviews.cnet.com/Bandwidth_meter/7004-7254_7-0.html

Guy

 

[Teegate]

Here was my results on one try.

Download Bandwidth Test Results
Download speed: 3667 kilobits per second

Test details: 3354 kilobytes downloaded in 7.316 seconds.
Receive buffer size: Not available

Our test determines the time it takes to download a large file to your PC and reports the resulting bandwidth in kilobits per second (Kb/s). Internet congestion can cause wide variations in your results; you may need to test several times to get accurate picture. (See About Bandwidth for a detailed explanation). In general, if your transmission speed is roughly 85 percent of the rated speed for your connection, your setup is tweaked pretty well.

And this is another test of my connection.

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/islandtee/speed.jpg

 

[bobpbx]

Thanks Guy. Go soak your head Bear...:rofl:

Mine was rated from 2519 to 3517. I did it about 7 times. The first 2 were 3131 and 3517.

Is that 3.5 MB per second?

 

[Teegate]

Thanks Guy. Go soak your head Bear...:rofl:

Mine was rated from 2519 to 3517. I did it about 7 times. The first 2 were 3131 and 3517.

Is that 3.5 MB per second?

I wish! I believe that is kbytes per second, not mega bytes.

Guy

 

[bobpbx]

Here is mine. Blazing, right?

http://reviews.cnet.com/7009-7254_7-0.html?CType=2273&ac=609&ISPID=&ISPNAME=&&kbps=Infinity

 

[bobpbx]

I wish! I believe that is kbytes per second, not mega bytes.

Guy

But read what I wrote. A megabyte is 1000 kilobytes.

 

[Boyd]

Hey, I thought I'd just post an update on my Comcast speed problems. The other day I decided I finally need to call tech support and have them check my line since it was getting really slow. Now I knew they would want me to unplug my router (for sharing the modem with multiple machines), so I tried plugging the ethernet from the modem directly into my computer and re-booting.

Wow, I guess there's something weird going on with my router, cause I instantly saw a huge speed increase. It's been fine ever since then too. A few nights ago I was at our office late and had our whole T-1 line (1.5mbs) to myself, so I downloaded a big 400 MB file and saw throughput of 70kbs (obviously a bottleneck at the remote server). When I got home (3:00 AM) I tried downloading another file at the same site and only saw 10kbs speed - that's when I decided I had to do something. Well late last night I tried the same thing via comcast, without my router. I clocked the download at over 200kbs.

Running the tests in Guy's links, cnet said my download speed was 1.7mbs and the pcpitstop test said 3.3mbs (obviously they use different techniques).

So anyway, I just picked up a new Linksys (Cisco) router, and we'll see if that works any better. I wouldn't feel particularly safe without the NAT (network address translation) that these little boxes offer. They isolate your home network from the internet.

 

[BEHR655]

Your cable conection should be the main conection into your computer. From there you run it through the router and to other compters on your network.

Steve

 

[Boyd]

You can't "run it through" the computer. The router needs to connect directly to the cable modem. It appears as a single IP address on the internet. Using NAT, the router assigns dummy IP addresses to all the machines on your own network. These addresses are only valid within your network, and are not visible to the rest of the internet. This provides a high level of security. People on the internet can only see your router, they can't directly access any of your machines.

The only way to run it through your computer would be to install a second ethernet card, and use your computer as a gateway/router. That doesn't make a lot of sense for home use, and in fact it's exactly what a hardware router does. It has one port for the WAN connection (the internet) and multiple ports for each machine on your LAN (home network).

My issue was that something was obviously going wrong inside the cheap little router, such that data packets weren't flowing through it at full speed. Hopefully the new router will clear that up. I've installed a bunch of these at various places and never seen this problem before.

If you don't have some sort of a router/firewall between your computer and cable or DSL modem then you're taking a big chance - especially with a Windows machine. Your computer is available to the whole internet for whatever hackers want to throw at it. I wouldn't trust the software firewall built into Windows for protection, or any of the add-on products either. These little Linksys routers are cheap, I just paid $60 for mine at Best Buy. It includes a 4 port ethernet switch so you can share the connection with 4 computers. For a few bucks more you can get a model that also includes wireless networking, if that's something you need (unfortunately there are a lot of security issues there however).