If this was another ISP, I might be irritated, or even angry. But I can't work up the effort.
I mean, this is Comcast we're talking about. Even by the very low standards of ISPs, they're pretty nasty and generally unpleasant. What did you expect?
I mean, this is Comcast we're talking about. Even by the very low standards of ISPs, they're pretty nasty and generally unpleasant. What did you expect?
However, I'd be willing to bet that in most areas Comcast is probably your most reliable and fastest choice- unless you can get fiber, then always do that.
I was spoiled in Portland for years with Verizon (then later Frontier) fiber. When I moved to Seattle I was shocked that the best I could do was Comcast.
After 5 years with them I had one incident that involved an actually shitty customer experience that was saved by one of the best customer support experiences I've ever gotten anywhere (thanks Joe in Seattle Comcast Tier 3 tech support).
I've been using my own modem since before it was cool, so I never got hit by the monthly rate hikes or the 'free wifi' hotspot you can't disable.
If I didn't have fiber in my area now I'd begrudgingly get Comcast (if only just for internet) as my next choice.
I can't help but feel that all of the providers are at this point happy to not compete with each other. It's expensive to build out infrastructure, and where they don't compete, they can charge more. This feels like there should be a monopoly case against all of them for effectively being in league with each other, even if there has been no explicit agreement.
On top of that, states like Tennessee blocking cities from expanding their own networks to help reach those who only have one provider? And the providers trying to argue that 10mbits is broadband?!
I'd like to see that where this is barely competition, municipalities take over. But, that doesn't necessarily mean much as in SF we've passed two resolutions for city wide wifi, and it's basically a sham.
You do understand the "XFinity wifi crap" has absolutely zero affect on you whatsoever, with the exception of the 50mw or whatever power draw that extra SSID takes right?
If so, why do you hate it so much? It's an amazing idea - on Comcast owned CPE create a network-wide wifi network before you hand off to the customer. It affects that customer's traffic in absolutely no what whatsoever any more than anyone else on the neighborhood cable segment would. In exchange for $.50 worth of power a year, I now gain access to a city-wide network of rather surprising density. I fail to see a downside.
I'm very curious why you think this is remotely a problem. I hate on Comcast more than the average guy, but the absolutely incorrect FUD they get on this product even on HN where folks should know better is beyond puzzling to me.
What's nice about it is that you can increase your speed if you have a router capable of load balancing by having one interface be the typical WAN and the other interface being the xfinity wifi.
> I'm very curious why you think this is remotely a problem. I hate on Comcast more than the average guy, but the absolutely incorrect FUD they get on this product even on HN where folks should know better is beyond puzzling to me.
Have you ever lived in an apartment complex?
1) The interference from a block of 20 units is now doubled and massively overlapping.
2) The people in the common area by the pool by those units are now drawing on the wifi rather than using cellular. So, yeah, it has a net effect of adding people to the "neighborhood" that would not otherwise be there.
Comcast pretty much rendered Wifi completely unusable in the last apartment I lived in. (i.e. Sub ~5mbps speeds on a 75mbps connection that used to serve wifi at 20mbps+)
Not true. It's a second "virtual" SSID, not a second physical AP. If it has no clients, you're just getting an extra periodic advertisement packet.
Of course your second point stands. But that interference scales with # of connected users, not # of APs.
I understand that this could have created access points in apartments that didn't previously have them, but that was likely to happen either way. I also understand most folks are not used to living in extreme wifi density, so it's a shock at what you have to do to get good coverage. Welcome to the unlicensed band - in many areas you have to have a AP within visual range of you to get decent performance and this has nothing to do with Comcast. I actually just finished installing an AP-per-room in my place, due to the sheer number of neighbor APs. Only a few of which were Xfinity - I am quite used to living in high density environments.
The days of naively tossing up the latest and greatest AP+router combo with the highest gain antenna possible is largely over, at least for anything resembling an urban environment. You see many companies in the space realizing this and you'll see even more products based around the need. It's far better to have lots of small lower power APs within LoS, and will be the only way forward as the unlicensed band gets more and more utilized (e.g. verizon LTE potentially using it).
2) Perhaps. It is plausible (but relatively unlikely) that a neighborhood segment is already overloaded, and the intermittent wifi usage of passing-through customers increases that contention. I have no data, but I would be surprised if this was a material concern. I know I only connect to it when I absolutely need it, since it's "roaming" without the app is such a giant pita.
- Always and correctly not be seen as MY traffic
- Prevent a jump from the public to my private LAN
- Not leave me exposed in some previously unimagined way
- Slow down my personal internet experience
In the past the Comcast WiFi hardware was particularly prone to not handling a lot of WiFi clients very well.
Additionally, I don't want to run their WiFi, I have Ubiquiti gear I'd rather use.
Also, I don't want to pay them $x a month to rent the hardware.
Finally, even if I feel the probability is near zero and I've got nothing to hide, I still don't want to add just one more way I can possibly get screwed.
Though it did actually save my butt in a couple work situations.
At this point I'm starting to think the best shot we've got is if Tesla swoops in and saves the day with very-low-earth-orbit satellite internet service. Even that's not a guarantee because who knows how they'd operate as an ISP, maybe no better than what we've already got. Add onto that the fact that attempts at net neutrality are being rolled back and we may face the prospect of internet slow lanes, and the picture may be getting very bleak.
But I don't see how Century Link is any better.