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Comcast and Net Speed Tests

Posted by kdawson on Sun Jul 08, 2007 08:39 PM
from the mystery-but-in-a-good-way dept.
The Internet
JimDaGeek writes "I recently moved to Columbia, SC where I have Time Warner as my cable ISP and pay for an 8 Mbps connection and have been very happy with the service, speed, and reliability. In contrast I have heard bad things about Comcast. So now that I am up in the Philadelphia PA area visiting my parents, I decided to test out the speed and reliability using the Speakeasy speed test. The results surprised me. Here are the reported download speeds in Kbps: New York, 18,946; Washington, 15,821; Atlanta, 11,257; Chicago, 10,042; San Francisco, 4,230. What is going on? I know my father is not paying for a 10+ Mbps connection. Is Comcast giving priority to popular speed-test sites?" From Comcast's site, in the Philadelphia area they seem to offer download speeds of 6 or 8 Mbps, with an option for a "PowerBoost" to 12 Mbps on large files. This wouldn't explain the results JimDaGeek got of almost 19 Mbps down.

Update: 07/10 12:07 GMT by KD : A friend in Massachusetts had a tree fall on his house. The Comcast guy who reconnected the lines told him that they are boosting the line speed to 20 Mbps down / 2 Mbps up in certain areas to be more competitive with Verizon FiOS.
+ -
story

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  • SpeedTest.net (Score:5, Informative)

    by ragnarok (6947) on Sunday July 08 2007, @08:42PM (#19794551)
    The Speakeasy speed test is just a re-branded version of speedtest.net [speedtest.net]. They have a lot more test locations to choose from there.

  • Time of day? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by carlivar (119811) on Sunday July 08 2007, @08:43PM (#19794561)
    Since cable bandwidth is shared, wouldn't the time of the test matter? I've noted (very unscientifically) that my Internet seems slower between roughly 7-9pm (on Charter in Los Angeles area).

    • Re:Time of day? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by catwh0re (540371) on Sunday July 08 2007, @09:02PM (#19794737)
      It also makes me think of how complicated the simple "bandwidth test" will be should net neutrality get thrown out the window.

      Already we juggle the factors of location, "paid for speed", shared bandwidth issues with daytime or peak traffic.. but then without some kind of neutrality we'd also be juggling whether or not the interconnects between yourself and the test site are all on a higher priority or lower priority pipe.(something we could never know)

      Today your ISP can blame a bit of the slowdowns on network conditions, but ultimately it's obvious if your ISP is a slower provider.. but in the future they'll be able to knowingly serve you slow speeds while claiming it's just the low-priority sites you may be visiting.

    • Re:Time of day? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by lancejjj (924211) on Sunday July 08 2007, @09:03PM (#19794747) Homepage

      Since cable bandwidth is shared, wouldn't the time of the test matter?
      FYI, practically all internet traffic traverses shared communication lines. The point-to-point connection of DSL becomes shared as soon as your local copper pair is squeezed onto a multiplexed line, within a few thousand feet of your home.

      • Re:Time of day? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ivan256 (17499) on Sunday July 08 2007, @11:16PM (#19795793)
        Yes, and your cable connection uses a shared upstream connection once it reaches the CO too. The difference is that the "last-mile" connection is also shared. Either can become a bottleneck depending on traffic.

        Of course the internet traverses shared lines. That's practically the point of the internet.

    • Re:Time of day? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MrShaggy (683273) <chrislight&gmail,com> on Sunday July 08 2007, @09:22PM (#19794897) Homepage Journal

      Since cable bandwidth is shared, wouldn't the time of the test matter? I've noted (very unscientifically) that my Internet seems slower between roughly 7-9pm (on Charter in Los Angeles area).
      I look at the difference between cable and dsl as 2 different ways of getting to a train-station.


      Cable might be like taking a bus to the station. There might be other people there. However, its not that significant.


      Dsl is like taking your car or a cab to the station. It definitely is not a shared ride into the station.


      The one thing that happens is that everyone gets off of there rides, and they all take the train out. Pretty much at the same speed.

      Of course during that time of the day there are many people on the internet, so it won't matter what you are using. Its somewhat insignificant how 'slow' it is. The only thing that kills the dsl is how far away you are from the office. Thats pretty wild. The thing is that you can get speed tests from eith side of the country or even planet. So even if it isnt the rush hour here, it will be elsewhere.


      Thats why I think most dsl ads are so misleading.

  • Giving Comcast Props (Score:3, Informative)

    by tenchiken (22661) on Sunday July 08 2007, @08:44PM (#19794577)
    It kills me to say something nice about the brood of bloodsuckers that are Comcast, but I can verify that Pockets of Comcast's net are seeing huge increases. In particular, I have seen speeds of 19-22Mb/s burst to testing sites, and almost 2.0MB/s non-bursting.

    That's in the Denver region using both speedtest.net and DSL tools.

    Give credit where it's due, but Comcast does appear to be amping up the bandwidth hugely.

    Between this and the Zimbra announcement, Comcast has firmly passed Qwest as next to last evil corporation.
    • To everyone patting Comcast on the back for a few scattered examples of decent, above board service, I advise you to check [consumerist.com] The Consumerist [consumerist.com] for a bit more information on Comcast's practices.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Novanix (656269) *
      Actually I get really high burst speeds, but if you a long download of >10-15 seconds it will drop to your 6-8 megabits a sec rate. It confuses all the speed testers as basically any large transfer for the first so many seconds will go very fast, and its just after that the speed really drops. Best way is to just downlod a large file and see what the speeds are like 20 seconds in.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by dreddnott (555950)
          I've been using dial-up at home for all of ten years. They won't even pave our frontage road let alone string cable or DSL out here.

          How do I do it? Well, I suppose I'm just used to it. I'd say I use Opera to cope, as it's such a snappy, efficient browser, but I've been using Opera for at least eight years (version 3.something), since before the Internet was bloated, so I guess that doesn't count. I do set the Opera caches to their maximum sizes to minimize the horror of redownloading the static content of w

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MBCook (132727)

      I have Comcrud. They bought out my local cable company years ago and raised rates, trashed service, capped the internet speeds, and all sorts of other fun stuff. I have something like a 6 mbps connection if you listen to them. I've seen it up as high as a little over 1 mbps (from speed tests and such). As it is now, every speed test I can find is maxing out at about 300 kbps down and 350 kbps up, which is what I was getting hours ago when this story first hit the firehose.

      Jerks.

      I love monopolies. My only

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Firehed (942385)
        As a slashdotter, I doubt it, but could you have confused Mbps with MBps?

        When I was on Comcast (actually, come to think of it, I think I am here too), I usually got speeds right around what was advertised. Hell, I got a speed boost when they took over Adelphia.

    • I can verify that Pockets of Comcast's net are seeing huge increases. In particular, I have seen speeds of 19-22Mb/s burst to testing sites, and almost 2.0MB/s non-bursting.

      I've had Comcast and I found their download speeds to be quite usable and the occasionally help of burst speeds like you mentioned is nice as well. However, their home service is still only available with 40kB/s (320kbps) upload bandwidth which is shit. And to make things worse, it seems that the more of that upload bandwidth you use, t

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Eric in SF (1030856)
        Two things:

        I have Comcast (8/768) in Cole Valley, San Francisco, and I have also noticed the speed increase. Uploads to my website are now cruising at 140kb/sec, occasionally dropping to 90kb/s. No complaints here! I performed a dslreports speed test recently and it also reported some Korean or Scandanavian-class bandwith numbers - the highest I've certainly ever seen in my time with broadband.

        Second - it's my understanding that as you saturate the uplink connection (max out uploading a file) on a consumer-

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Blkdeath (530393)

          Second - it's my understanding that as you saturate the uplink connection (max out uploading a file) on a consumer-grade connection/router, you interrupt the normal control-channel "Chatter" of web browsing. Basically, the "I got it" packets are stuck due to the saturated uplink, and you don't get the next packet until the acknowledgement makes it.

          Actually you're absolutely right. Any TCP (connection based) protocol will suffer from a saturated uplink to the point where it can become unusable depending

    • I'm a bit skeptical on this...

      It could just be that they are using QoS and Packet Shaping to speed up connections to these 'test sites'. Allowing for 'bursty' traffic to break formal limits for 5, 10 or even 60 seconds a test takes. This makes people happy going 'Hey cool I'm getting X-speed here when I'm only paying for Y-speed'. A customer placebo if you will.

      That is the problem with net neutrality not being respected by ISPs, they can engage in these sorts of behaviors without anyone knowing if they're g
    • Perhaps the speed tests are used frequently enough for their system to cache it automatically?
      As long as it isn't special treatment for the test sites, it is hard to blame Comcast for the speed boost.
  • Those are some pretty damn good speeds. I was lucky to get 4Mbps at Time Warner when their max was 6Mbps. I switched to a 5Mbps DSL connection which ended up being faster. I wonder if there's much of a difference now that they bumped it up to 8Mbps. And it seems with Comcast apparently bumping up to 16Mbps according to another poster, a connection speed race could be on. Maybe it's time to look into switching back?

  • Well thank god we still have TW in Raleigh (Score:3, Funny)

    by gelfling (6534) on Sunday July 08 2007, @08:47PM (#19794609) Homepage Journal
    What with their rock solid 3.7MB down and 374KB up - Anything more would be Goddamn communism.
    • TWC, Bellsouth and Clearwire.....NC is still in the dark ages, not 1 offering of double-digits down or even 1mbit up.
  • I had 6Mbps service through them several years ago and routinely downloaded ISOs at 10Mbps.

  • DOCSIS 2.0 Plus (Score:4, Informative)

    by Fallen Kell (165468) on Sunday July 08 2007, @08:49PM (#19794629)
    It all depends on the cable modem that you have. Some of the new motorola modems, like the SB5120, do not have the ability for Comcast to limit as much as they sometimes like. Comcast themselves has not been too worried about it as long as the network segment you are a member of is not over-crowded. They see it more like a new benefit which allows better competition against FIOS. Personally I average 25-28mbps on my modem.

    Here is a current snapshot:
    [speedtest.net]
  • Try a real-life saturation test: Bit Torrent.

    Tell whatever client you're using to go all out.

    If they block it, use Jidgo to download ALL of Debian (but that only tests download, not upload).
    • No its no good using p2p. Most if not all the ISP's do traffic shaping (read: bandwidth throttling) on p2p traffic.
  • Those of us living in Houston, TX should keep a sharp eye on Comcast. We used to have Time Warner, but this month the entire network has been switched over to Comcast. The before and after service analysis will be interesting.

    Again, keep a sharp eye open. We can't miss this opportunity.

  • PowerBoost uses compression (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rdean400 (322321) on Sunday July 08 2007, @08:52PM (#19794661)
    I'm wondering if the speed test uses a data block that is more compressible.

  • PowerBoost (Score:5, Interesting)

    by the_cowgod (133070) on Sunday July 08 2007, @08:54PM (#19794681)
    The Speakeasy test regularly reports over 20Mbps on my Comcast connection. The "PowerBoost" feature allows basically uncapped speeds for the first ~15MB of a transfer, then it drops down to the normal 6Mbps. I can easily see this effect when doing large downloads with my UsenetServer account. It does inflate speed test results, but Comcast does not appear to be favoring the test sites in any way.

  • In contrast I have heard bad things about Comcast. So now that I am up in the Philadelphia PA area visiting my parents, I decided to test out the speed and reliability using the Speakeasy speed test.

    I've seen the same thing in the other Comcast markets (but not all over). What would it take for Comcast to throttle all traffic except that going through Speakeasy's "speedtest" IPs? I'm imagine very little, and it likely could make some people feel good about Comcast's performance. That's not to suggest that Comcast is actually faking it - I'm just saying that it could be done. Clearly, Comcast wouldn't do this - it'd be a stupid risk for them.

    In any case, maximum download throughput is only a part o

  • Comcast had boosted us up to 28mbps download speeds according to Speedtest.net. I routinely confirmed it with download speeds of around 2.9 megabytes per second of total incoming download bandwidth during quieter times of the day (midday, night time). I should have been getting 3.5 megs per second, but I attribute the difference to a shiteload of 24/7 Youtube-like traffic.

    They said they were doing some kind of trial in my area, and that it would end.

    Well, it did end, and I went back down to a max performanc

  • Download a linux distro (Score:4, Informative)

    by Raleel (30913) on Sunday July 08 2007, @08:58PM (#19794711)
    Someone above mentioned using jigdo to get all of debian, but even using wget to get a full dvd or cd set of some distro will provide you with a good data point. That's been my standard test for quite a few years now.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by grcumb (781340)

      Someone above mentioned using jigdo to get all of debian, but even using wget to get a full dvd or cd set of some distro will provide you with a good data point.

      I beg to differ. Downloading a single file is only indicative of how fast a particular connection is between two particular points. P2P, if it's allowed to, saturates the network with two-way traffic to numerous end points. If - and this is a big if - there were no constraints on P2P traffic at large on our networks, I would consider it a near ideal measure of TCP traffic capacity in the real world.

      In fairness to your comment, you characterised that single download as a 'data point'. Strictly speaking,

  • I have Comcast in the DC Metro area (Maryland side). Just ran a test, and I got 5856 down and 363 up to the DC server at Speedtest. My connection is advertised as 6Mbit - seems to be spot on.
  • 50k/sec upload suuuuuuuucks. At least make it 128k/sec like other broadband. The reason I care is that I'm making a P2P video game, and I have to go with the slowest upload for broadband: Comcast's 50k/sec upload. If it went to 128k/sec upload, my game could support 2.5x as many players!
  • The results surprised me. Here are the reported download speeds in Kbps: New York, 18,946; Washington, 15,821; Atlanta, 11,257; Chicago, 10,042; San Francisco, 4,230. What is going on? I know my father is not paying for a 10+ Mbps connection. Is Comcast giving priority to popular speed-test sites?

    Ok... and now try with the cache disabled.

    Just kidding...

    Seriously though, I think he's probably clicked one of those "Click here to make your internet faster" ads... I knew it they work!

  • Do It Yourself (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby (173196) on Sunday July 08 2007, @09:10PM (#19794795) Homepage Journal
    The Speakeasy speed tests are indeed easy, and easy to "speak" about on their site with posted ratings. But there's nothing magic about it, that you couldn't do with simple commands from your PC.

    All you've got to do is fire up a shell (whether Windows, Linux, or other client OS), and download a big (>10MB) file while timing it. Find an HTML link to a video or something, then download it from the shell (eg. wget or curl in Linux) to a local directory. Watch the minutes and seconds from when you first connect (right after you give the command, after you get the download feedback), to when the file is complete. Then examine (eg. ls on Linux, or use your GUI file manager) the file for its exact size in bytes, then divide the time by the size.

    I know this seems obvious, but distrusting Speakeasy's numbers as cooked by Comcast shouldn't be the last act before punting to Slashdot. Real tests, not just examples like Speakeasy, are trivial to run by yourself.
  • I have Comcast 8 MB/sec. service. When I begin a long, bandwidth-intensive operation my throughput will start out in the low teens, like 13 or 14 MB/sec. Then in about five seconds it will throttle back to just under 8 MB.

    Perhaps something like this accounts for the Speakeasy.net results.

  • Lots of factors... (Score:4, Informative)

    by SuperBanana (662181) on Sunday July 08 2007, @09:17PM (#19794863)

    To name a few:

    • Router/signal compatibility. Comcast has switched signals several times and in two cases, it caused horrendous performance. There's also a particular cablemodem (has a big blue "sleep" button on top) that has serious problems with high packet rates and connections (ie, BitTorrent crashes it.)
    • Interference.
    • Local loop, backbone, and uplink utilization. Guess what, guys? Sometimes traffic peaks for strange reasons. Sometimes it's a virus outbreak, a new movie trailer, or a big news story.
    • THE INTERNET . It's unreliable, not guaranteed, never has been, and YOU ALL KNOW THIS AND HAVE BEEN TOLD IT OVER AND OVER AND OVER. I work for a university. We have seriously fat pipes. We have a 10Gbit backbone. And some sites I can FTP from at 2MB/sec. Others, I get 40KB/sec. "Speed tester" services compete for bandwidth just like everyone else. Stop holding them up as some pure, holy source of internet traffic that magically flows through every router at maximum speed.
    • Some content is akamai-zed. I get Apple's software updates at maximum line speed, for example.

    If you're not happy with your service, CALL THEM. My parents were some of the first people to get MediaOne service back around '98-'99, and every time they had problems, we picked up the phone, and it was taken care of.

    I've had the same experience elsewhere. Any time I have problem with the service, be it regular disconnects or lousy performance- I pick up the phone, and a few minutes later someone is checking into signal to noise ratios and such. If you lease the modem, they're usually happy to try sending out a tech and swapping out a modem if you're polite but clear there's a problem. They're usually even more amenable if you pick up the modem yourself at a "service center."

    In my years as a customer and having friends who were customers, I've seen a)flooded junction boxes b)in-house distribution amps turned up too high c)1 failed modem d)one buggy model e)several incompatible modems after "upgrades" to the area network (usually to support faster speeds.)

    In short: call comcast, ask them to look into it. They've almost always been helpful, through all the various company changes: MediaOne, RoadRunner, etc.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pokerdad (1124121)

      In short: call comcast, ask them to look into it. They've almost always been helpful, through all the various company changes: MediaOne, RoadRunner, etc.

      As someone who used to work for Comcast allow me to say rotflmao. Either you are one lucky sob or you are lying.

      Just as a matter of example (one among many) during the entire nine months I worked for Comcast the entire state of Illinois never left the outage board. That isn't to say that no one in Illinois ever had a connection, but many people had little or no connection and we were under instruction to do absolutely nothing for anyone from Illinois - just keep BSing them till they gave up.

  • 20 Meg Cable Modems Practical Since 1999. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dave Burstein (863276) <dave@dslprime.com> on Sunday July 08 2007, @09:24PM (#19794915) Homepage
    19 megabits on an unloaded cable modem node is quite practical, especially for brief speed tests.The U.S. cable modem architecture is based around nodes that share 35 megabits or so downstream. RCN even sells a 20 megabit service, which David Reed buys and reports gives him the promised 20 megabits most of the time. In practice, most nodes run with 5-10 megabits typical load, as only a fraction of the time multiple users on one node simultaneously download megabits and fill the pipe. Statistical multiplexing (sharing) works much better than people expect on cable modem networks, especially on well managed nets that split nodes and otherwise expand capacity when needed because a node gets frequently congested.

    Comcast and cable suppliers are working on several techniques to allow customers to get more than the 6 or 8 meg typically allocated, while not causing undue congestion. "Speed burst" technology tests the network load, and if uncongested temporarily raises the speed of an individual modem making a fast download for a brief period. While that's marketed as "doubling" speeds to 12 and 16 megabits, bursts to 20 and 25 megabits are also practical.

    The new technologies require upgraded equipment and are typically being tested first and then rolled out market by market. So it would be no surprise if a subscriber in Philadelphia (Comcast's home town) is benefiting from a test or early deployment of faster speeds than Comcast customers elsewhere.

    100 megabit+ (shared) cable modems are being deployed in Japan, Quebec, and France, bonding 3 or 4 35 megabit channels for higher speeds. These are early "DOCSIS 3.0" products, unlikely to be widely deployed in the U.S. until 2009. Comcast's CEO, Brian Roberts, demonstrated 100 megabits at the cable show in Las Vegas this spring, and will probably test widely in 2008 and go into deployment (especially where Verizon is building FIOS) the following year. DOCSIS 3.0 requires a new cable modem unit, however, so this customer is unlikely to be an early tester.

    That doesn't explain why the test to San Francisco only ran at 4 megabits, which could be explained by node congestion a few minutes later, inferior Comcast backbone connections to Speakeasy's host in San Francisco, or other circumstances. For more details on coming faster cable modems, google DOCSIS 3.0.

    Dave Burstein

    Editor, DSL Prime

  • They are up to it. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by WindBourne (631190) on Sunday July 08 2007, @09:33PM (#19794979) Journal
    I tested my comcast 6 MB with and got 1.2 MB., but With speakeasy, it ranges from 8-12 download. It is obvious that they are selectively caching. [bandwidthplace.com]
    • That's a great transfer rate. Do you happen to know what they're charging for that speed in Philadelphia? Nothing affordable even comes close around here.

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