Some experiements on Comcost service

[Caveman]

I've heard stories of getting "throttled" etc, and dismissed it as ISP conspiracy theories, but here's the scoop. These are arguably not "scientific tests" per se, but... you decide:

I've been with Comcast (as the only provider in my area for ~11 years). ATT is now here and google is scheduled to hit my neighborhood in ~9-12 mos.

Service was decent at 300 MB/s after I got a free upgrade a few years back. Aside from the typical Comcast nonsense here and there, I was a relatively happy customer and took an interest in doing speed tests, etc... Then, about 6 mos ago, unbeknowst to me, my promo ended and Comcast had lowered by speed to 150. It was something that I began to notice in small ways. Then, I began to notice movies and other streaming stopping occassionally. Each time when this happened, I'd check speed and see it at 150 - 170. Then incredibly, the issue would ALWAYS disappear after visiting a speedcheck site -- ALWAYS without fail, like a pattern.

Last week I was on a vacation staying at a hotel that offered 5 MBs max. I brought my laptop and we streamed movies, etc... to our heart's content and displayed them on the rooms TV. No issues whatsoever - no slowdowns, no stops as it buffered, etc... So, the service from Comcast that is (supposedly) 30X faster gives worse service. How can this be?

One current thought is that Comcast throttles until they detect you are hitting a speedtest site and then they clear the connection for a great reading, then throttle again as desired when you're not hitting an ip for a speedcheck site...

Thoughts?

 

[mnewsham]

ISP peering to the wider internet is very important for popular streaming services like netflix, youtube, hulu, etc.

A good way to see if this is affecting you is to try streaming during off-peak hours (morning hours or late night generally). And then try again during peak hours (6-10pm, especially on a friday night).

If you had no issues during the morning, and a LOT of buffering issues at night, your ISP probably just doesn't have good peering bandwidth to whatever service you're having issues with.

If this IS what is affecting you, you can get around this by using a VPN with different routing, in my case personally my ISP had issues with youtube specifically, even with 1gbps fiber I would struggle to buffer 480p videos during primetime hours with my normal routing through northern virginia. However, running my connection through a VPN in new york and I would have no issues at ALL, even when at the same exact time without the VPN youtube would be unusable.



It can also be a peering point outside of your ISPs control that is heavily congested.


I guess it COULD be comcast throttling, but I doubt it.

 

[JackMDS]

Besides the obvious (Nontechnical) Greed conundrum that is exercised by almost all ISPs, the problem is the Model of Cable TV technology that is abused on Node allocation sharing that is done close to each client connection.

The type of sharing that is done by Cable exposed every single user’s traffic/stream to be very vulnerable to the what the neighbors’ that share the node are doing with their Internet use..

It is very apparent in Big cities (like NY) where hundreds of users in the same building come home in the afternoon from work and start using the Internet. While (as personal example) 300 Mb/sec provides smooth and agile service if at home in the morning while everybody else is at work, the connection deteriorated every day in late afternoon when people come back from work.

I have Spectrum 300 Mb/sec. in the NYC and FIOS 50 Mb/sec. in a more rural location. Downloading a large single file is always faster with the Spectrum 300 Mb/sec. connection. However, the general agility, performance, and smoothness is much better with the 50 Mb/sec Fiber.

Eventually Cable would disappear and most service would be Wireless and Fiber, but it will take some time (years) to happen.


😎

 

[Caveman]

Thank you both for responding. So, if I read what you are saying correctly, an ISP switch to fiber may guarantee I get batter agility, performance, and smoothness, even at a lower Mb/s. Due to cost, I'm thinking of dumping Comcast for ATT fiber which is now in my area. They "guarantee" up/down speeds of 300 Mb/s (at any time f the day/night) because of the fiber. Good is coming in 9-12 mos and at that point, I will most definitely move to their fiber to avoid 1-2 year contracts, etc...

That said, it really seems like Comcast is doing some shenanigans with the fact that each time I had a buffering issue with my 150 Mb/s service and immediately tested the connection and it read 150-170 Mb/s, and as soon as I returned to my application that was buffering (VuDu), then the problem cleared up until a "timer" expired on "last visit to a speedtest ip" and then started throttling again. I repeated this over and over enough to see a clear pattern. It just "smells" weird and way too coincidental like Comcast is purposely giving a clear path any time I'm trying to test speed but when I'm streaming then it stops performing, only to start performing again for 5-10 min until the next buffer/speedtest cycle.

 

[mnewsham]

A fiber ISP will GENERALLY be better, but it's no guarantee. Too much depends on local network infrastructure, even a large fiber ISP like AT&T likely has some areas that are worse than others.

 

[Ranulf]

Just out of curiosity Caveman, what cable modem are you using? Comcast leased model or your own? Is it a 32x channel model?

 

[Genx87]

I think Comcast has poor peering with youtube. I used to struggle during prime hours streaming 480p on Comcast. I switched to Centurylink a couple years ago and never have an issue.