RSSComcast gets a theoretical upstream speed boost
By Tim Conneally | Published June 12, 2008, 1:02 PM
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The nation's number two broadband service provider in 2007, behind AT&T, announced this morning it is tripling the upstream speed of its Performance and Performance Plus residential high-speed Internet packages that range from $42.95-$67.95 a month were announced to have "nearly tripled" in speed.
This morning, BetaNews tested these increased speeds in three US locations, and saw at least a kind of change in performance, not necessarily for the better.
The first image represents a Broadband Reports test done on June 6 in Indianapolis, before Comcast had announced any performance enhancements, with a 625 Kbps upstream speed. Speeds taken at around 10:30 this morning show only a tiny increase to upstream speeds, likely attributable to general flow of traffic, not any actual difference in network delivery.
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| A graph showing an apparent speed boost for Comcast service in Macomb County, Michigan. Click on the graph to see it in full-size. |
This graph is a performance test taken this morning in Michigan, where the gold line "TX" represents Transmit Speed. At just around 1 Mbps, Comcast has indeed allowed speeds to come up a bit. (The "RX" receive speed line on this graph represents what the test system was receiving at the time, while it was "on idle" -- that doesn't mean the perceived receive speed is actually slower.)
Speeds measured this morning in Maryland on a Comcast-hosted system with a "Performance" package generally hovered at a 650 Kbps upstream speed with sporadic bursts into the 800 Kbps range, just barely squeaking past the Performance Plus tier's prior ceiling.
With these tests in three discrete Comcast markets showing inconsistent results, it begins to look like Comcast is providing, to use a common aphorism, "a lot of sizzle" for an upgrade that will not deliver solid results across the board.
BetaNews invites those of you who are Comcast users to perform similar tests and share your findings with us.
d 7561 kb/s
u 363 kb/s
So my download went up. Upload stayed the same.
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|No change in Atlanta
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|Haven't seen any increase in my Comcast internet service.
Still gets upload speed of 1.5m, nothing higher.
How do you go about updating the modem in the first place? Is it like flashing a BIOS on a PC or something?
Is the upgraded firmware "pushed" automatically by Comcast to your modem? Or do you have to do it manually?
If you have to do it manually, could someone list what those steps are please?
Thanks
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|Depending on the modem you can flash it's firmware and tweak some settings to increase performance. Many cable modems run internal webadmins for configuration just like routers and other networking devices do. The cable company's don't always tell users about that though. Figure out what model you have and look it up on Google.
If the physical hardware is very old and slow then you wont be able to do much about it outside of getting a new modem from Comcast. My cable provider was good at letting you upgrade your hardware for free. I had to bring the old hardware to the service center and pickup the new hardware myself is all. They wont come out and do it for me. No idea how Comcast does things.
Unless yer modem is super old you shouldn't have to do anything on yer end to see this speed boost though.
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|Power off the modem for one minute. Power it back on.
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|+1.
On cable the provider usually provides any updates required for your modem through a central configuration setup. No user intervention required (or allowed!).
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|My internet connection (Buckeye Cable) is 6144/640 with an average speed on my end of 5768/571. While it might not be the best in the world it cost me exactly $0.00 a month as it's free cable company provided WiFi. The router is on a pole in my back yard not 10 feet from my house so the signal is always strong. It's just so awesome.
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|I guess when you can take the bandwidth from one (Cable / TV) and give it to the other (Internet Services) it's easy.
Pretty soon they will tell me to make TV / HD Compete with FIOS, they will need to charge more to perform needed upgrades.
I am sure they will increase my Bill based on the price of Oil too!
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|In a real world test of my Performance Plus package, I just uploaded a 20 MB (so PowerBoost would only be the first 5 MB or so) file via Hamachi VPN to another Comcast customer. I received a consistent 306-312 Kbps upload speed. If you average that at 309 Kbps, I'm getting 2472 kbps upload speed. VERY NICE!
The other customer has just the Performance package and topped out (during the last half) at 104 Kbps (832 kbps) when sending the same file back to me. Not quite 1 mbps, but they are also using a very old cable modem.
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|I've always had better luck with http://www.speedtest.net/ for speed tests...
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|yea in general speedtest.net is the best.
However right now I'm not actually at home. And their test gives bad results when accessing over remote desktop.
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|Just found another site. DSLReports.com and got the following message on one of my tests:
"Warning: You connection shows signs of ISP upload compression."
I don't know if this is new or not.
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|I wonder if these people reset their cable modem. I know sometimes you have to in order for updates to really apply.
I cannot reset my modem as I only have remote access at the moment.
However my speakeasy.net test shows 1703kbps upload.
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|cant wait to go home!!!
will host ps3/xbox360 game
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