Comcast Cheating On Bandwidth Testing?

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?"

Gasp!

[Oxy the moron]

Comcast? Dishonest? Say it ain't so!

All kidding aside, this wouldn't surprise me too much. Comcast (and probably all other providers) are advertising this super-mega-intarweb speed as "up to x mbps." So, theoretically, as long as *one* site can provide data at that rate, their marketing garbage still stands. Even if 99.9% of the other websites top out at 4kbps, if Speakeasy's speed test says it can transfer a file at 15mpbs, technically Comcast is correct. They are giving you "up to 15mbps."

Wouldn't it help with browsing speeds?

[Tranvisor]

Most internet browsing is with relatively small amounts of data, so wouldn't front-loading of this nature noticeably increase browsing performance? Since this kind of performance is noticed by the majority of users it would seem to be something that increases their perception of their connections' speed.

I'm not saying that Comcast might not be cheating on purpose for speed tests, I just think that there might be another reason behind it other than just to make their test scores artifically high.

Re:Powerboost

[IndustrialComplex]

I suppose it depends on how much it drops for those larger files. If it goes from 10Mbps to 1 Mbps I could see the point, but if it only drops to something lik 7 or 8 Mbps I think that's a reasonable rate. We also have to remember that this is a residential connection. It is designed for the typical residential user. That type of person will download a lot of smaller files regularly. The result is that the web browsing will seem very fast. ISO downloads? Not so much.

I wonder how it deals with P2P or a multi-streams of data. What if I have 10x 30Kbps streams running simultaneously would that aggregate and trigger the throttle down mechanism?

Re:This is an advertised feature I believe

[jandrese]

Yeah, the point is that you can get a webpage down in those first few seconds generally so browsing is much better than it would otherwise be.

Re:Web browsing optimisation

[GodCandy]

I would have to agree. Most "normal" internet traffic is very bursty. You load the page then you sit there and look for a minute and then you load another. Sometimes you get the wild hair to download something large, at which point the provider limits your connection to prevent there network from becomming saturated. It is a resonable thing to do. I can't argue with it as long as the provider is stating that this is a few secconds at the beginning of a connection and will not sustain for the duration of your download of all 6 Star Wars DVD's.

Tin foil bushes.

[Anonymous Coward]

"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?"

The thing I'd like to know is how you all make it through the day seeing conspiracies and evil doers behind every bush? I'd think you'd burnout.

Re:This is an advertised feature I believe

[arivanov]

Torrents do that anyway. That is the reason why comcast have to beat them on the head. Each segment in the download is small enough to fit its "booster" criteria.

Actually, there is nothing wrong with this approach. This means that interactive services and casual browsing are favoured vs bulk downloads. That is what every ISP wants to do anyway.

Re:This is an advertised feature I believe

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't matter if you do.

1) No peer can upload at those speeds
2) If your speeds were that high, Comcast would just cut your connection due to their 'fair use' policy (trust me I know)

Re:Powerboost

[TheLink]

Well if I did it, the boosts will be on a per customer IP basis. Not per connection. You would then have to be able to successfully _request_ for a new different and valid source IP address every few seconds, and then do the downloading. Good luck with that.

Comcast might do things differently.

Just develope a system

[LM741N]

that takes advantage of this by downloading in an on/off switch manner.

Re:This is an advertised feature I believe

[_KiTA_]

Torrents do that anyway. That is the reason why comcast have to beat them on the head. Each segment in the download is small enough to fit its "booster" criteria.

Actually, there is nothing wrong with this approach. This means that interactive services and casual browsing are favoured vs bulk downloads. That is what every ISP wants to do anyway.

Yeah, this is exactly what you want as an ISP. Your real customers aren't the college assclowns on Napster / Animesuki / etc, they're the Grandmas wanting to load Genealogy.com fast, and the professors wanting their students to be able to load Wikipedia fast enough to do research. (As some overgeneralized examples.)

Broadband, like dialup, is subsidized by the low use casual customers. Come to think of it, so's World of Warcraft, which I wish more of those "ubers" would realize before it's too late.

Re:Tin foil bushes.

[Dimitrii]

I'd think you'd burnout.

I've worked with quite a few conspiracists and finding a new one seems to invigorate them. It is a positive feedback loop that can be quite entertaining if you don't get as invested in making them see the truth as they are for you.

Re:I wish

[Ioldanach]

The equivalent 15/2 residential package is $52.99. I therefore presume that they consider the value of static IP, unblocking of ports, and no 'no servers' clause in the contract to be worth $47.00 per month. These things are bundled together, and if you don't want to pay the extra $47, no servers for you. In my opinion, they're charging way too much for the extra 'features' (which are really the removal of something actively added to cripple the service in the first place), but they are still offering them to you, just at a price. That's capitalism (combined with government sanctioned monopolies) for you.

Re:Powerboost

[Mister Whirly]

""The Comcast network is really content-agnostic," said company spokeswoman Jeanne Russo."

This is technically kind of true.
They are not protocol-agnostic though. But content, sure. They block both "illegal" and legal bittorent files, so they are not examining the content, they are just making assumptions without really looking.