Internet Speed

And that's priced for residential?!? I'm jealous. I get about 1/5 that. Download I don't care. 20 Mbps down is fine. But upload I'd love to have much faster to support full online backups.

I get about the same as DaveF.

100 Mbps service is not available in Northern BC yet; although, the 50 Mbps service is available. I have been tempted to switch from TELUS's ADSL service to SHAW, but I still don't really like the shared loop principle that cable internet relies on; however, the fastest available speed on the TELUS network is 25 Mbps and (I believe) it would require installation of fibre optic cable. It's a conumdrum, I think that TELUS sucks but I don't really care much for SHAW either. Although, SHAW is sure trying hard to get people to switch to their services. It feels like I get a piece of junk mail from them every couple of days.

I get about 30 down and 6 up which is more than enough for my needs (although I would love to experience 100mbps) Wouldn't we all. I was getting a fraction of that until I learned about DOCSIS 3.0. I went to Costco, purchased a compatible cable modem and confirmed what my research suggested. Instantly tripled my previous 10mbps speed and at no extra cost! Comcast never bothered to tell me about DOCSIS 3.0 and what it could do for me, but when I called them, they did offer a free modem so I was able to return the one I got from Costco. Anyone getting speeds under 8mbps, I would strongly suggest you look into this.

I found I could get DOCSIS 3.0 service, but it's pricey.

 

 

 

I think I have 25/25 on fios. no idea what I had on Comcast efore we switched three months ago but I dont see a difference.

Hmmm. I guess it can depend on your service area, but my understanding is that as long as the infrastructure is in place it should not cost anything extra. You might want to check into it again.

Time Warner (RoadRunner) Cable definitely charges more for higher speeds.

Wow, but I wonder how? To do that they would have to have a system in place to restrict the speeds of those not willing to pay. Do they control it by refusing to activate a DOCSIS 3.0 modem?

i don't know how it works. But they've got 4 speed categories, priced accordingly. I'm on "Turbo" which is a step up in download speed from "Normal". I have no idea what happens if I buy a 3rd party modem and use it.

Dave - As I understand it, if your area supports it, you should be able to step up to DOCSIS 3.0 speeds by simply purchasing a compatible modem and having it registered with your provider. As mentioned in a previous post, this is what i did, and once I verified the speed increase, I contacted Comcast and they gave me a free DOCSIS 3.0 modem.

Also, "charging for higher speeds" is one thing, but Cable companies usually charge for higher tiers of speed, not nominal speeds within a particular tier. I could get up to 50mbps from Comcast if I stepped up to the next tier.

Even if your provider won't give you a contemporary modem free [they should] I would say the speed increase is well worth the $80.00 or so you will pay for the modem.

Perhaps your provider is all-together different, but it might be worth checking into.

I'll check into buying a 3rd-party modem. While I'd like to have faster uploads, it's not worth an extra $50+ / per month solely for that (to me or my wife). (my biggest issue is online backups, and for that I could buy a new hard drive every two months and ship it cross country to my parents' :)

well not trying to be a stick in the mud but speed for the UL is as important as the DL cause you can ONLY DL as Fast as the other guys UL.. The Fastest I have attained on a dl was 7mbps which took mere seconds to dl..

So Until these ISP Give us SYMETRICAL SPEEDS the Faster DL is useless..

no sence paying for what we can not achieve and if you listed to them there are factors that contribute well the main factor is the UL Speeds on most ISP Offerings are SLOW!! that is why we can not attain these blazingly fast speeds.. Speed Tests are basically lying to us..

I know FIOS has a 50/50 now that would be worth getting as long as the other networks increase their UL as Well..

Most consumers will download far more often than they will upload. If the "other guy" were a peer [end user] I would tend to agree with your assertion. But since the other guy is usually an ISP [or directly hosted by one] I'm afraid I don't follow.

I'll admit I don't know what you mean by symmetrical speeds, but I'm still having a hard time understanding your logic. No ISP will guarantee speeds because they cannot in and of themselves control it. As with highway traffic, Internet speeds can ultimately be affected by any number of factors at any hop in the route. That's why any public quote of Internet speed is always accompanied by a disclaimer that essentially negates the initial claim. But speed tiers do have value because the ISP can definitely cap your speed at that point.

Well, rereading this, I see that you probably meant equal up and down [symmetrical] speeds, but I still think it's best to concentrate on speed tiers instead of absolute speeds, which are really nothing more than marketing hype as you imply. If you step up to the next speed tier, performance will definitely increase, but neither tier is likely to match its advertised maximum.

My speeds are embarrassing, and I'd rather not mention them in case of ridicule and laughing.

I have the most basic level of service from Comcast, which in my area is stated as 15Mb down and something like 3 up. During high load times (after all, cable internet is on a network, so you are affected by how much others are using) it sometimes drops down to 8 or 9Mb, but it is typically between 15 and 20 Mb down. Up is almost always 4-5Mb. There are service levels here up to 100Mb, but I have no need for that.

I agree the symmetrical up/down thing makes no sense for most people.

I was stating that no matter how fast the ISP's Claim their DL speed is it's bogus.. you can not no matter what, DL faster then the other guys upload.. So say you have a 1gig patch at Otherguysserver.com and the fasteset ul he has from their ISP is 5mb that is as fast as you would be able to attain in the right conditions so having 100 mb DL speed is useless if the UL speeds these ISP's offer are SLOW??

Then how come if they can not control sp[eeds when you do a close by speedtest you do attain your Rated Speeds.. that is what the isp's tell us and we believe it.. what I am trying to state is what we should all be complaining to our ISPs about not having symetrical speeds..

The USA is supposed to be near ALL FIBRE and these abysmal speeds they limit us too are not what they could be..They are still alot better then 56k but not as near as fast as they could be..

Two years ago, I used to enjoy the speed the OP is experiencing. My upload and download figures were almost exactly the same. In addition, I thought that the price I paid was quite affordable.

Unfortunately, while I now live in a nicer neighbourhood and in a house vs. an apartment, I no longer have the option of such high-speed cable internet. I currently have a DSL line with actual speeds of around 14 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up, plus a 3G service for my mini-laptop for mobile computing. It's dirt cheap (where I live, internet service in general is cheap cheap cheap) but it doesn't meet my needs. I'm about to start a small business and work from home, and while I can obviously find a high-speed hosting partner for my company's website, I need to run my own servers as well in order to provide support to clients and vendors. My current service just doesn't cut it.

It's really aggravating to know that fibre optic internet is available less than a kilometre (just over a half mile) from my house as the crow flies, but it's unlikely to be installed along my street for several years. I checked, and the company that owns the infrastructure would happily bring fibre optic to my home just for me -- for €6,000 (about $8,700). I think not.

YouTube isn't uploading videos to their ISP as you're downloading them. The typical consumer upload speed of 1Mbps is irrelevant for YouTube.

 

You're right in that my SpeedTest and ISP claims of 25 Mbps don't necessarily correspond to YouTube download rates. But my upload rate is irrelevant for watching videos, I need better downstream capability from my ISP and perhaps from YouTube's content-distribution network.

 

Yeah, that argument really doesn't make sense with how most people use internet. The heaviest single use of internet in the US it NetFlix. NetFlix is NOT on some residential 3Mb upload pipeline. The argument is only valid with a single peer-to-peer connection. Most people don't work that way very often. Plus, it completely disregards the fact that most households will have multiple devices accessing the internet at the same time. So that 20 Mb main pipeline coming into the house allows several devices to access at the same time and still get speeds of several Mb, even if each one is only a 4Mb, the total might be 20.

Again, in the real world, I most definitely do get the full 20Mb at times, such as when doing a software update through the Apple server. Recently I did a clean install on several computers and the initial update was about 1.25 GB, which it did it in less than 20 minutes. No, most of the time a single connection will not get 20Mb, but I definitely can run 3 or 4 simultaneous downloads and get 20Mb total, so it is anything but bogus.

...plus, I have web hosting as well. My ISP and my personal upload speeds have absolutely NOTHING to do with how fast the DL speeds are from my server or what DL speeds my ISP offers. The two are completely unconnected. It does affect how fast I can upload TO my server, but that is an entirely different thing.

Others have adequately addressed the bulk of your assertions, but I must tell you that the above claim is simply not true.  As a pioneer in telecommunications, the US actually has an ageing infrastructure in dire need of an overhaul.  Major players in the industry [Comcast, AT&T, Verizon etc] are working hard to address this issue, but nations like Japan, Korea and even Thailand have far greater fiber penetration than the US, [since they never installed our legacy infrastructure from decades past] which is why super fast Internet speeds are commonplace there. 

 

 

 

 

The reason most tests return rated speeds is that they are only measuring from your home or business to their nearest server, usually in the same city or metropolitan area.  This is not a valid test of Internet speed since, in the real world, your destination server is likely to be in a different state or even a different country.

 

You know John, the funny thing is when I test local servers, including Comcast (Comcast is my ISP) in Denver, 60 miles away, I typically get slower speeds than when I test servers in Western Oregon or Washington, which is over 1,000 miles away. I always get better ping results from Denver, though.

Yes.  This is a perfect example of how multiple factors ultimately affect speed and why no one entity will ever guarantee it.  Your experience sounds more like an issue with the servers in your area. Are the speeds consistently and appreciably slower?

I just ran a bunch of tests and I think the bottom line is that the Comcast server in Denver is just spread too thin. I got a great ping of 11ms, but download of about 8Mb. I tried several others in Colorado and one in Wyoming (Cheyenne, which is the closest to me at about 40 miles, but being Cheyenne, no telling how limited the capacity is. Ping was a miserable 112ms.) and every one of them beat the Denver Comcast DL, by 50-100%. Then I ran a Comcast server in Salt Lake, which is about 500 miles away, and got a ping of 24 ms and DL of over 20Mb. My service is stated as 15Mb. UL with everyone was around 4Mb.

Sonic, the company managing Google's high speed internet project, is also rolling out gigabit internet to a small number of people.

 

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20110607/ARTICLES/110609527?p=all&tc=pgall

 

-Keith