[Edwood]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bootman You are welcome! (yes I work for Comcast (NJ). Specifically in the cable modem side of the business.) Is the speed upgrade worth it? IMO only if you do a lot of uploads. You won't notice it web surfing and not much places (besides Microsoft?) can you download much more than 400KB/sec (3Mb/sec) anyway.

Man, too bad you don't live in Southern California.

I have Comcast, but only because DSL is too far away. So I get raped for cable modem. $60/month. Grrrrrrrrr.....

It's pretty reliable and fast, though.

-Ed

 

[Stephonovich]

You people all suck. Only option we have (short of satellite, which is utter crap - ping times in the 400-500 ms range are not my cup of tea. Heck, I could hit 200 ms with dial-up) is Bellsouth DSL. Granted, it isn't all that bad, other than the upload. We have 1500/256, and I can usually about 140 KBPS from big servers, and 150 KBPS (fastest I've ever seen is 153) from university servers mirroring Linux distros. Only thing faster is 3000/384 which we'll hopefully get soon. I really wish they had faster uploads, though. BitTorrent is sad with a max upload of 32 KBPS. Only cable option is Charter, 3000/256, and it's not even available where we live.

As for people claiming > 3 MBPS doesn't make a difference, you're forgetting a few things: BitTorrent, Internet2, and above-mentioned university servers. BT is, in theory, infinitely scaleable. Internet2 is so much faster than the current system it's not even funny, and unfortunately, invite-only, and really only used for research right now. Although 7 GBPS is still insane

And finally, university servers. For those of us who use Linux, and get patches, kernels, or distros a lot, it's noticeable. I once got one full megabyte per second at UNL from a server we'd set up. And no, this was not over the LAN.

 

[zachary80]

Free speed upgrade? Didn't they just raise the rates in January

Anyway, comcast has been pretty decent for me. However, within the next year Verizon is to be installing fiber optics into nearly every home and building in my city (just got annexed! yay) starting just down the street. Huge performance upgrade for $35/month

 

[bootman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Imyourzero I know you said you're on the cable modem side, but I will tell you that the main complaint I've heard regarding Comcast is in regards to the ever-increasing rates for the cable television service. I've seen a lot of people switch to satellite TV because of this, and my Dad is on the verge of switching also. What's with the rate hikes?

In reality, it’s the cost of programming.
Cable companies have to sign contracts with the content providers.
These cost have steadily risen.
Example: Viacom owns about 1/2 of the most common cable channels.
You can't order just one but must take the whole package or drop their whole lineup.
We'll you have little choice but to pay what they want and in turn pass that cost down to the consumer while still making a sufficient profit to satisfy the share holders.
No different than any other company really.
The worst are the "sports" networks.
They want a fortune for their programming.

 

[bootman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dariusf bootman any 'inside' info you might have/be able to share about the lowers speed/price accounts? My local office sales people have no clue.

I'm an engineer not in marketing. (the evil empire)
I'm busy enough trying to make sure the service runs smooth
and now having to plan for upgrades to keep up with the increased bandwidth.

I'll say this.
If you had 10 million customers paying $45 for product A.
Then all of a sudden you offered product B at $10 less.
What would that do to your profit margins?
Could you make up the loss by adding enough new customers?

 

[gloco]

Quote:

Originally Posted by minya The one great thing about Canada is that the cable internet service here is far beyond the USA's. I've had 5Mbit down/800Kbit up for a long time now (at $45 Cdn/month) and some Canadian ISPs (like Cogeco) are offering 9Mbit down, and I think something like 3-4Mbit up for about the same price. (Not in my area yet, though, unfortunately.) - Chris

Yeah, i hear this all the time from folks in other countries, but how dense is the population at where you live?

I have optimum online, the speeds are great in regards to downloading files off of ie, but their news servers is sickeningly slow, so i pay an additional $25/month (on top of the $50 for optonline) to get a anywhere from 500KB/sec to a full megabyte/sec (yes, a Megabyte, not a megabit....speed is rated at 1000+ KBps) downloads on newsgroups.

 

[raisin]

Remember, those speeds are theoretical maximums, and are superceded by local traffic demands.

 

[Jahn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by infiskik i have cox, and pay for the 4mbit service, and dont opt for the 5mbit service, and ill tell ya why, they dont cap very well, for instance thats my best nightly speed from their newsgroups. i average 5-6 from 1am to 6am, then i drop to normal speeds during "peek" times. but in that 5 hours ive gotten whatever ive queued from the ngs.

my hookup (verizon avenue dsl) always says 11mbps. who knows if it's true or not - but i bittorrent like a speedster.

 

[zachary80]

bootman (or anyone else), when my computer is on it interferes with the cable TV. Do you think this is a power issue? Techs have been out here multiple times but couldn't pinpoint the problem.

 

[RYCeT]

Don't you guys know that our Internet is nothing compared to what they have in Japan & Korea. 50 Mbps down, that's insane, ours looks like a turtle here

 

[Elec]

Yep, although those places are relatively small and densely populated, so it's far easier to do short high-speed runs or run a fat fiber pipe into a high-rise apartment, for example.

I have cable because I'm STILL not sure I could get DSL even if I wanted it. I'm about 19k feet from the CO located in the downtown area of my Chicago suburb.

 

[myself, aka me]

There is no such thing as reliable broadband where I live. 56k. Ugh. If we could change, we would. Even if there was something available, it would be speed capped or bandwidth capped or both.

 

[bootman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by zachary80 bootman (or anyone else), when my computer is on it interferes with the cable TV. Do you think this is a power issue? Techs have been out here multiple times but couldn't pinpoint the problem.

Do you mean when you are transmitting (uploading) your low band channels mess up? (ch 2-6)

 

[infiskik]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jahn my hookup (verizon avenue dsl) always says 11mbps. who knows if it's true or not - but i bittorrent like a speedster.

its pretty accurate, ive clocked it with netmeter, and DUmeter and coolmon and it rocks those speeds. i love torrents but ngs are my home.

 

[zachary80]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bootman Do you mean when you are transmitting (uploading) your low band channels mess up? (ch 2-6)

I believe so, although it may have been on more channels. Those (2-6) have always been the worst overall for anything.