Is My Modem Holding My Download Speed Down? (1 Viewer)

[Arthur S]

I have Comcast cable. They are advertising 6 Meg download (for 19.99 month/6 months). My cable modem is probably close to 3 years old. I ran some tests today and the best I could get was 4.2 Meg down. Do you think it is the modem, or is that as good as I can expect?

 

[Clinton McClure]

I'm not familiar with broadband since all I can get here is dial-up, but my modem is slower than it should be. I have a 56k modem but I'm only connecting at 31.2k max (14.4 or 16k normally) with a top download speed of 2k. It isn't the modem's fault though. All the phone lines where I live are at least 50 years old. Honestly, some days I wonder if a telegraph would be faster.

 

[Ken Chui]

Have you tested your bandwidth recently? One site I frequent for tests is DSLReports. Test your speed at various intervals throughout the day to see if results are consistent.

Road Runner advertises a 6Mbit transfer rate for my area, but I rarely come close to this figure. There are any number of factors that could account for slower-than-advertised throughput, including number of users in your area, time of day, etc.

 

[Patrick Sun]

I'm on Comcast, and this is what I got from the DSLReport site:

2005-07-15 14:21:31 EST: 3983 / 365
Your download speed : 4079517 bps, or 3983 kbps.
A 497.9 KB/sec transfer rate.
Your upload speed : 373831 bps, or 365 kbps.

 

[MarkHastings]

Does cable internet suffer the same "sharing" issue as years ago? It could be that a lot of your 'neighbors' are slowing down the connection by being on at the same time.

Or perhaps your lines aren't able to pull at 6MB?

According to Comcast's site:

 

[Arthur S]

Clinton

I feel for you brother


I can't complain. At 19.99 the service is great. Even if I have to break service now and then to keep the 19.99 I like it better than DSL. I keep NetZero as a free dail-up back-up service. They give you 10 hours a month for free.

Apparently the city of Philadelphia is getting ready to turn on a city run wireless broadband service. I don't know much more but it is going to be free or low cost, at least to low income people.

 

[Ken Chui]

I believe so. I know the transfer rates are somewhat acceptable (to me) during peak hour usage (i.e. weeknights), but it improves significantly during the early morning hours (between 3:00-8:00am).

 

[Tekara]

Cable internet will always suffer from "sharing", it's the foundation of how it works, if your neighbor is a pr0n freak your download speeds will suffer. It may also be the ISP like in my town, Adelphia reroutes our packet traffic through a switch on the east coast (philidelphia I believe since the last time I did some trace routes) so our latency and speeds are terrible for broadband.

DSL is a dedicated connection so you won't suffer if your neighbor is zealous, but it still won't save you from a bad ISP. As suggested before, check out broadband reports and see what others in your area are reporting, if your alone in your area on bad speeds then there's some hope, if not, might want to check out some other providers.