Comcast Cheating On Bandwidth Testing? 287
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?"
Come on (Score:1, Funny)
Re:This is an advertised feature I believe (Score:4, Funny)
Can't be right (Score:5, Funny)
That can't be right. From your description, it sounds like a genuinely good and beneficial to the user idea. Where's the catch ?
Re:Can't be right (Score:5, Funny)
That nice warm shower feels pretty good until you realize someone is pissing on you.
Re:Powerboost (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This is an advertised feature I believe (Score:5, Funny)
Nobody should ever enjoy a bandwidth chart to the degree you are enjoying it. I don't know whether to be scared or awed.
Re:This is an advertised feature I believe (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is an advertised feature I believe (Score:2, Funny)
Link [xkcd.com]