I pay Comcast alot of money for the 8Mbps Broadband. This is their highest.

When I did the speed test, I got this result:
http://i.dslr.net/imc/0/0/4/3/45336053.png

Does this mean they're ripping me off?

Hey I live in NY 2. Their ripping your parts of...oh boy...

now how much exactly is it that you are paying?

I pay Comcast alot of money for the 8Mbps Broadband. This is their highest.

When I did the speed test, I got this result:
http://i.dslr.net/imc/0/0/4/3/45336053.png

Does this mean they're ripping me off?

Earlier today I tested my speed and was nearing 1.5mb at each spot tested (download). I just tested again and my speed has dropped over 1/2. Time of day, events going on, etc can clog the pipes.

Test several times, optiminally with several testing sites before blaming the provider. All of them have teeny print saying your speeds will vary and they arent responsible.

This is the one I was using today:
http://speakeasy.net/speedtest/

But then, when my brother used a cable internet connect, their wires were badly corroded. I dont remember which service it was, but when the whole area finally went down they replaced the cable and everyone saw a great increase in their net speeds.

I have Comcast and I actually get faster service, than I expected. I usually use speedtest.net, it gives me 18 Mps, but the above mentioned speakesy website gives only 12 Mbps...

So go figure, or use the speedtest.net...

Also if you use a wireless router at home, that will slow you down 40% at least...

The main problem with ISP's is they give you an "upper figure" in regards to what speeds you can get, however depending on the distance from the exchange, the type of land line you have and the number of other people also using that exchange defines the overall speed you get.

Basically due to contention the likelihood is you'll only see your highest speeds during the most obscure hours (When people are asleep, or at work or school) for the rest of the time you'll find your speed dip to stupidly low levels.

In the UK it was brought to the attention of watchdog groups and supposed the government tried to put an action in, in regards of ISP's actually producing the speeds they promise, however for now it's just wishful thinking and we are still stuck with low speeds even when paying for supposed high speeds.

i.e. I pay for up to a 20Mbit connection, my reasoning was for online games namely perhaps running servers and perhaps doing some website related stuff (FTP/File Transfers), however at about 7pm each day my bandwidth drops to less than 1.5Mbit and doesn't come back up until after 11pm.

Speaking via phone to their tech department just infuriated me, they attempt to make out that it's you modem, your router, your computers configuration, while I know full well it's because they've sold alot of their services quickly for cheaply and now they can't keep the contention up without dropping the bandwidth.

Quite frankly for now most people are better off with the cheaper 2Mbit lines since you'll find your contention won't drop below that.

Stryder so the companies lie to us? Why not sue them?

Stryder so the companies lie to us? Why not sue them?

Sueing costs money, after all lawyers are not free. If you have the money to shell out for one and you can generate an unbiased report on speeds for say 3-6 months on more than just a single subscriber to their service, then you might stand a chance for a reimbursement for the charges, however as for legal fee's you might end up still having to shell out.

And most ISPs claim that their speeds are up to 8 Mbps, or whichever. They make no claim that it will be 8 Mbps all the time, nor that you'll ever see that. But that is what you are technically capable of.

If you're running wi-fi or a bunch or routers or anything, speed's going to go down by as much as 33%, but comcast WILL get you up to their speed if you hit the net at the right times, I've seen it done! Yes, rare occurance, but meh, not like you have much of a choice, right?

I pay Comcast alot of money for the 8Mbps Broadband. This is their highest.

When I did the speed test, I got this result:
http://i.dslr.net/imc/0/0/4/3/45336053.png

Does this mean they're ripping me off?

Yep. If you had a real 8mbps connection, that test would have shown 7813kbps / 7813kbps results. Most likely you purchased something a package that had a highest download speed of 8mbps a different highest upload speed (maybe 1 mpbs) and confusing terminology that states actual results may vary.

Don't worry, all ISP's play the same game. If you really want pure, predictable, and uninterrupted speed then get a T1, fractional T3, or if you're really effing rich... a full T3.

DSL is the most reliable of the widely available broadband connections for speed consistency... DSL is the same at 6:00 PM and at 3:00 AM because the signal is linked to a telco CO loop... most of those loops are OC-48(2.5 gigs a second)... DSLAMS, the expensive hardware in the CO, excel at passing packets...

now as to web based speed tests... they simply aren't measuring your speed... they give a kind of an estimate, but even that can be wildly off the mark... the nature of your browser, the 'horsepower' of your system, the overall 'health' of your OS, etc... play into those type of tests... though quite often people don't have enough knowledge on the subject matter to understand why, and thus don't believe me... sort a 'herd mentality' of 'everyone else does it'...

Netstat Live is my favorite 'wintel' way of actually investigating data transmission... it emulates the powerful commands of UNIX in a slick GUI... it's free and really works well, i have used it and other AnalogX programs for years...
Link to download... (http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/nsl.htm) it's very cool maybe some of you will try it...

the nature of cable internet can also outright 'spoof' these web based speed tests by caching...

the fact that broadband service 'slows down' is usually not caused by 'contention', in the normal sense of the word anyway... a company can sell 300 megs a second in links off of a DS-3.(45 meg a second, aka T-3)... and it will work well until all the links are trying at once... that is not contention, it's simply oversold bandwidth... like the airlines overbooking a flight... that is not contention either... it's overselling a product...

i set up the connectivity for a Comcast broadband NOC myself when they moved into a city... they had two DS-1's (1.5 megs a second, also called a T-1)leaving town... and were selling 3 meg a second cable links... i mean do the math... that is SOP for large corporate broadband companies... they have guys in suits who can make intelligent looking speeches on why it's good business... at the rate they were paying me an hour i didn't mind listening to that fertilizer...

the 'jimmy' thrown in by Comcast is large caching servers... Comcast monitors every web request, by every customer, and caches popular ones... including speed tests... thats why they had to pay out millions and millions of dollars back around 2K in a lawsuit... they were selling that information, everything every customer was doing online, to information collection companies for big money...

that's also how they know who actually uses a lot of bandwidth, and limits connection speed, or outright cancels that person's service... Link to article on comcast... (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/06/AR2007090602545.html) they don't in any way mean for you to use 8 megs a second, for example, because they have greatly oversold the bandwidth leaving town to the 'big rectangle'... nor do they provide 8 megs a second to the internet... they sell 'loops' of connectivity that move at various speeds... those loops can be swamped also... i suppose the word 'contention' might fit there...

just for trivia's sake... at one time i had more bandwidth to my home than any house in america... that may have changed now... 24 strands of single mode fiber... i had an OC-3 and and OC-12 breakout and ran my internet company our of my home office... the execs at the fiber company checked and no one could move as much data as i could at that time...

Like everyone says, it's why they never say just 8 mbps, they always say up to 8 mbps. I have a line that's "up to" 16 mbps, in reality I get about 9-10, which is still pretty good.

They also love to oversell their lines, which means they count on maybe 5% of people using their full bandwidth at any one time. If you have 20% of people using their full bandwidth suddenly the lines are packed and everyone's service is slowed down dramatically. This is why they get so pissy when people actually use the "unlimited" internet service they're paying for.

i.e. I pay for up to a 20Mbit connection, my reasoning was for online games namely perhaps running servers and perhaps doing some website related stuff (FTP/File Transfers), however at about 7pm each day my bandwidth drops to less than 1.5Mbit and doesn't come back up until after 11pm.
I have a similar problem with my line. Between 5pm and 12am I'll lose ADSL sync randomly, usually 1-2 times per hour. The attenuation on the line is already quite bad, so I'm assuming that when the streetlights come on they add more noise to an already bad signal and cause the modem to lose sync. Very annoying, but nothing can be done unless I downgrade to 1mbps :(

/eek

dr mabuse in the house
trying app now
i knew analogx way back when
why i dont know
some cool app obviously

welcome to sci

Comcast limiting certain p2p usage:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080213-comcast-discloses-network-management-practices.html

I'm sure Comcast is giving you the best service they can. It's just not a very good company. Poorly run with a lot of employees who are not very good at their jobs. We lost our TV service for six whole days--missed the Superbowl. I called them about twenty times and they kept trying to solve it by sending a signal to our box. It would work for about half an hour then degrade to zero. Finally on Tuesday they agreed to send a guy out--on Saturday!

The next day I got a call from a guy in Comcast who asked me to check my TV signal. It was perfect, and we stayed on the line long enough to know that it wasn't degrading, He said he read over my problem report and analyzed it.

1. Since we had internet service during almost all of that time but not TV, it couldn't possibly be the cable.

2. Since we have two TV converters and both of them would cut in and out at exactly the same time, it couldn't possibly be our boxes.

So he started working back from there and analyzing the problem. He figured it was at one of the little green "obelisks" that dot the landscape and act as nodes for their network. So he sent a crew out to start in my back yard and work backwards toward the company. The obelisk right behind our house was fine, but they only had to drive to the next one to discover that it had been left open by one of their own people and it was full of water. They replaced it, uploaded all the software, and the problem was solved.

It took me six days to find someone in Comcast who actually knew how to do his job!

That's what you're up against, dude!