Comcast internet speed improved with non-Comcast hardware | Hacker News Reader

Comcast internet speed improved with non-Comcast hardware

jeffreymartens.com

229 pointsjmartens172 comments

Comcast ripped me off much more than that. My HOA signed a (incredible bad) deal with Comcast to provide basic channels (the ones nobody wants) for $35/unit* * for 3 years. Then, Comcast's rep allegedly* forged the contract to last 8 years instead of 3.

The stupid manager lost the emails, Comcast insisted on the (allegedly* forged) 8-year contract and so the HOA paid it until the manager found the original signed contract (years later) and compared it to the forged version. Then Comcast still pressured the board on the 8-year until we hired a lawyer.

I estimate that this alleged* fraud was worth $378,000.

* It was never proven in court but the evidence is pretty strong. The forged pages have inconsistent numbering, scanner marks, wording, and date format.

* * It was actually a rate that increases over years. $35 was last year's rate.

I'm not under any NDA so I'm exposing it but making sure all my details and wording are correct so I don't get sued. Please forgive the edits.

Another reason to never live somewhere with an HOA.

As an HOA board member, I approve of this comment.

Indeed. I became HOA president of my loft building as a defensive measure.

Great move!

I wish more of us would run for government office as a defensive measure!

Look no further than POTUS.

So no condos?

If only HOAs were only for condos.

I think he means there aren't many (any?) condos without an HOA.

Every single Home Owner's Association should immediately die in a hole.

Honestly, I like mine. Let's see...

- No palm trees: great, they're tacky as all hell, fall over too easily and people never maintain them so they fill up with rats

- No tall screening trees: great, same basic reasons

- No painting your house: great, there's always some idiot who wants a horribly clashing house

- File for changes: not a big deal, if your stuff is in order it usually takes a couple days.

- Can't leave trash cans out all week: great, less of a buffet for raccoons at night.

- Community pools: great, I go out there at 10:00 pm with a couple friends and a few beers and drift around the pool chatting quietly

The only beef I've ever had was they wouldn't let me widen my driveway by a couple feet because it'd go over HOA-maintained plants. Not a huge deal, but I just drove over the plants and then claimed it was my neighbor doing it to get me in trouble. They gave up pretty quick. My dues are pretty reasonable too.

Sorry you guys have had crappy ones, but they're not all bad.

Why do you want to control what other people do to their houses? Is maintaining some sense of opulence so important to you that you would be willing to remove peoples' freedoms?

Edit: to those downvoting me, could you please explain? I don't understand.

Basically people move out to the suburbs so they can have more control of the area around them.

...so they agree to give up their property rights to an undemocratically elected group?

HOA boards are democratically elected.

They make their own rules and voting laws. There is no requirement of equal representation like the US Constitution provides.

Does every member of a family get a vote? How about every adult? Or is it just one vote per household?

The US constitution is but one of many sort-of democratic frameworks. And not overly democratic in its consequences (see gerrymandering, and the effects of the electoral college, or just all the problems with first-past-the-post even in theory).

So while HOAs have their obvious deficiencies, your attack is one of the weakest complaints imaginable.

But they're with a group of like-minded people whose rules reinforce many of their other NIMBY tendencies (i.e. no homeless shelters, adult bookstores, garish homes.) They agree with most of the rules, but because they want more control they tend to complain loudly about the ones they don't like.

> Not a huge deal, but I just drove over the plants and then claimed it was my neighbor doing it to get me in trouble.

Sounds pretty horrible.. Let me say, I am glad I am not your neighbour.

Ah, so you're the one responsible for all the intrusive rules on what I can do with my house.

So you did have a beef with your HOA but chose to ignore the rules that you expect everyone else to follow? If I was your neighbor I'd be planting palm trees.

HAM radio towers that look like the tackiest of palm trees.

You make a good point. I actually never saw it that way and you're right. Not sure why. I'll replant those bushes and make an effort to stay off them in the future.

Thanks, and sorry to my neighbors for being an ass.

Wow ... an actual stand-up guy! (or gal).

I tend to be anti-authoritarian myself and constantly have to remind myself that societies folkways, mores (and laws, regulations, etc) have a purpose other than to inconvenience me. Fortunately I've learned to drive more slowly and am not constrained by an HOA.

On some theoretical level the HOA contracts / rules are voluntarily entered into. So even the most hard-core libertarians (or exactly those!) should be into them.

Of course, in practice you often enter a HOA as the lesser of multiple evils.

I only regret HN guidelines prohibit me from properly expressing what a terrible spineless hack you are. I sincerely hope you grow out of it, the world needs less people like you. Have a nice day.

I was really neutral on the idea of HOA before this post, now I hate them, and people that like them.

That sounds awful to me.

Non-regulatory HOA's exist where they don't have a set of rules like that. The one my parents are a part of are more of a neighborhood organization. They have a neighborhood directory (where participation is optional), organize community events every so often (including the neighborhood-wide garage sale), and maintain some neighborhood property (primarily signs next to main roads).

I agree though that regulatory HOA's suck in general.

This is interesting. I had the same experience in Mountain View - paid for 100mbps+ service, and only got 30 - and even that was haphazard.

I went through a series of support requests. I eventually complained to the FCC and cancelled service. Once I involved the FCC, I had a rep call me, say they absolutely understood why I would cancel given my experience and wish me well. They provided me a partial refund for service levels that they never provided me with, and for days which I received no service.

I'm on Sonic now and I've been happy with them. The few times I've had problems they have been very responsive, and you definitely get the sense that their techs know what they are doing. They scoffed at the idea that they would ever sell their customer's data after the recent bill passed, and pointed out that although they resell AT&T service, their contract prevents AT&T from selling it either. It's the only ISP that has made a statement about their intentions publicly. I get a lower service level than what comcast promised, but I actually get that speed, and sometimes burst higher than promised.

Thats where competition benefits the consumer, its unfortunate that for large areas of the US, there isn't any competition.

"Pretty poor coverage" sounds like the author was relying on Wi-Fi for connectivity. I wouldn't trust an ISP-provided combo modem/router to do anything more than the bare minimum when it comes to wireless, most likely a single chain 2.4 GHz network (and 5 GHz if you're lucky). Replacing it with Google Wifi which is a Wave2 802.11ac 5 GHz device with Beamforming will make a world of difference.

Intentionally supplying old hardware that can't reach high speeds (eg a DOCSIS 2 modem) is actually bad for them as it wastes frequency.

I'd wonder about the same. Easy to test by plugging the Google router into the Xfinity one.

The other factor could be the Xfinity wifi sharing feature (customers can connect to other routers). Could be causing some issues or interference.

In many apartment buildings the 2.4 Ghz spectrum is just too crowded. Just using a cheap 5Ghz 11n without breamforming would likely solve the problem. I've got at least 40 bss's on 2.4 and I'm the only one on 5Ghz. It's crazy.

I'd say Comcast should use 5Ghz but then that spectrum will get crowded too.

All devices going forward (especially isp routers) _should_ use only 5ghz.

Consumers should have to spend extra on 2.4 AP gear to support legacy client devices. 5ghz has reduced propagation and there are so many more channels available that it is actually optimal to use in dense evvironments. Mesh wifi is pretty much a requirement for a lot of users to keep the same coverage with multiple rooms compared with their existing 2.4 ghz network.

As far as I understand, 5ghz is weak on distance which is a problem at my apartment building. Every time I'm on the 5G SSID, the internet becomes unusable in the bedroom and kitchen which makes 5G unusable for me because my devices don't select the 2.4ghz band automatically.

I'm a little late with my reply, but I wanted the solution to be here as well.

Poor 5ghz propagation solved:

https://eero.com/ https://lumahome.com/ https://madeby.google.com/wifi/how-it-works/ http://www.samsung.com/us/smart-home/ https://www.open-mesh.com/

Mesh networks are definitely cool but the biggest downside is that they are a bit pricy and I have heard that some of them do not work well. I cannot speak for any of those which you provided, though, except google which works well supposedly.

5GHz isn't a panacea, at least in my experience. It doesn't penetrate walls well enough to reach to the edges of my (quite small) apartment, so my laptops and other devices drop down to an acceptable rate on 2.4GHz.

In addition, I think Sonos still sells devices without 5GHz radios (and probably plenty of other companies).

Maybe you have thicker walls, but 5Ghz should really be able to work in a small apartment.

Lack of support is a huge problem though. Tons of devices are sold without 5Ghz support.

I live in NYC with old, thick walls (and a lot of interference, even on 5GHz). Even though my apartment is small, there are 3-4 walls separating where my AP is (at one end) and the other end of my apartment (the bedroom).

Same experience here. Amusingly, 5ghz works halfway down the block outside the building but dies in my bedroom. It's an older building, and the walls are built like bunkers.

2.4ghz works perfectly, and always has. I think the real answer here is more dual band routers, even in cheapo ISP provided combo boxes.

It doesn't really matter if 5Ghz gets crowded. Walls quickly get rid of that problem. 2.4Ghz crowding is much worse.

I can see about 10 other 5Ghz networks around me, but they only marginally interfere with mine compared to 2.4Ghz.

I just gave a DOCSIS 3.0 modem to a friend who was paying $7 per month on a DOCSIS 2 modem that couldn't provide the subscribed speed. Comcast had already charged her for a couple of truck rolls to troubleshoot the speeds, so it boggles my mind why the rented modem had not been replaced.

Even more interesting is that Comcast does have infrastructure in place to notify customers of these issues, though I have only seen them use it to convert customers who bought equipment back to renting. When I bumped my modem into the D3.1 threshold last year, the company made a number of calls to let me know that I could improve my experience by going back on a rental plan.

Comcast upgraded my speed because they thought google fiber was coming, and as part of that, has been bugging me to upgrade my modem. Multiple phone calls and emails. I own the modem and have never rented from them. And I haven't bothered upgrading because the download speed is basically fast enough already and I don't think it would improve the upload speed.

While I'm interested in considering this role of the router's wifi, I also feel like it doesn't take very good wifi to keep a speed test going 50 Mbps.

The author also mentions that their comparisons are done in cities, which are places populous enough such that it might be neighbors or people on the street using the Comcast Xfinity WIFI network via your router. It might be other people clogging channel time on your router's wifi, or it might be other people clogging the cable pipe!

Didn't see any other mentions, but turning off the public Xfinity hotspot is the #1 thing I'd try. It's a courteous service to leave open to travelers, but I wish there were some visibility to the home user about how much work it was doing for outsiders. Disabling guide: https://www.xfinity.com/support/internet/disable-xfinity-wif...

And Comcast only guarantees speed on wiring directly to their modem. Their Wi-Fi is generally unable to put out the full bandwidth you'll get off Ethernet.

Unless you have a business plan, I don't feel that they even guarantee that.

Heh, true. "Guarantee" is too strong of a word there.

Right, kind of disappointing that the author relied on Wifi. To draw any conclusions about the provided bandwidth I'd only trust measurements made using a wired ethernet connection. Wifi depends on too many variables.

This was my impression as well, especially since the Speedtest.net screenshots show each test was done on WiFi. It seems to me the author has a very loose technical understanding of WiFi and networking in general. I'll usually be among the first to criticize Comcast, but this was just a waste of time.

I used my own modem from the start with Comcast (bought specifically for their service), but after about 6 months I was having problems with the modem being disconnected multiple times per day, and sometimes unable to reconnect for hours at a time.

Comcast support insisted that my modem was unsupported, despite it being present on their supported modems list. After about 3 calls I gave up and started researching on my own, and eventually discovered that some of the incoming signal strengths were way off what they should be. Crossed my fingers and checked the box outside the house, and yup, Comcast had wired it up with a single cheap 6 way splitter. Replaced it with a quality 2 way splitter, and now I can at least get decent service for the absurd price I pay.

Ran into a similar problem with my modem -- the website clearly said it was supported, but three different phone service reps said it wasn't. I went out, spent $100 on a new surfboard modem, didn't help. When they finally sent a tech out, he said my original modem was fine.

This is a part of their sales playbook. Even if you have a top of the line modem that just came out and is on their support list, they will tell you its either unsupported or about to become unsupported and push you to rent garbage from them instead.

You can never trust anything a phone/chat rep tells you because they're aggressively pushed by management to integrate sales into support.

Don't use Speedtest.net. The major providers all prioritize their traffic and it gives unrealistic results.

I built a graphical console-based speed tester (client+server) that you can run yourself to get a more accurate picture and test between your home and servers you actually use:

https://github.com/chrissnell/sparkyfish

I appreciate the tool you've built. Having options is awesome.

That being said, when you know that Comcast and others prioritize their traffic through Speedtest AND you encounter subpar speeds even with this allocation in place, you know there is a problem.

For firewall rule purposes, I wish your program would have used 5201 by default, the standard iperf port.

It's configurable!

Just use --listen-addr on the server side and on the client side, just run it like sparkyfish-cli <hostname:port>.

I think it's a good idea not to use standard ports, to avoid any sketchy prioritization practices on the part of the provider.

Would also recommend fast.com, which uses Netflix cdn as the test, and so theoretically will reflect actual usage.

I think that Google provides one if you search "Speedtest" on a non-mobile device.

Another reason to not use speedtest.net is they use compressible data for their tests.

DOCSIS has some support for stream compression, so you'll often get highly unrealistic results.

On the other hand, basically all internet content is sent over the wire already compressed, so any stream compression doesn't help with it at all.

I've had speedtest.net overrate my connection by 2-3 times it's actual throughput.

Interesting. I didn't know that. For what it's worth, sparkyfish uses randbo [1] to generate a fast random stream of data for the speed testing.

[1] https://github.com/dustin/randbo

>DOCSIS has some support for stream compression, so you'll often get highly unrealistic results.

Do you have a source for this? I've never heard of it and I can't find any reference for this or even proposed support for this.

Yo, is your DNS server down? I get no responses for either the US or EU endpoints when I try to query for A records.

Sorry, I should update it. All of those public endpoints went down a long time ago. People were donating the endpoint machines and they eventually just disappeared.

You'll have to set your own up on a server somewhere.

Netflix's fast.com speedtest uses Netflix's nflxvideo.net CDN servers and HTTPS so it should be a good model for real-world Netflix video usage.

https://fast.com/

Sadly still only providing download speeds, as Netflix (understandably) doesn't care about upload speeds.

I like fast.com for friends and family since it's so unambiguous, and then https://speedof.me/ for anything requiring more detail.

Thanks for the recommendation.

Hadn't tried that (fast.com) before. Interesting results:

iPhone 6+ very close to router: 110Mbps 2012 MacMini (WiFi 802.11ac) very close to router: 120Mbps 2011 MacMini (ethernet but USB-powered switch in between): 92Mbps

With dslreports.com speed test the ethernet is consistently the fastest.

I have limited the download speed on the TP-Link Archer C7 router to 100Mbps in an effort to cut down on bufferbloat. Seems to work pretty well on the dslreports test - get A, A, A.

I get > 50% higher speeds on fast.com vs. speedtest.net

90Mbps on speedtest, 5Mbps on fast.com... BT isn't any better than comcast.

Anecdotally, I've had several instances across multiple ISPs where I've suspected the connection of being throttled, open up speedtest.net, and then immediately my overall internet speeds improved to "normal" and I could browse freely again.

Probably meaningless. If Comcast is un-throttling speedtest.net there's no reason why they'd need to un-throttle your entire connection just because you're talking to speedtest.net, since they can just un-throttle any connection talking to speedtest.net's IPs.

More generally, if your response to suspected bad network is to open speedtest.net, and given that a lot of bad network issues are transient, it's not at all surprising that you'll have cases where you suspect throttling, open speedtest.net, and the connection problem just happens to go away at that point. So this just becomes confirmation bias.

https://testmy.net has worked great for me and tests both downloads and uploads in increasing sizes.

Comcast supplies any new customer with a D3.0 modem from one of their suppliers (Arris, Cisco (now Technicolor) or Technicolor). Some of these models are known to have horrendous wifi. If you get one of the old models, Please please turn to "BRIDGED" mode and buy a decent dual-band 802.11ac router.

go ahead and purchase one of the retail modems and a seperate. If you want option of upgrading the Firmware and controlling your Router, buy a separate modem and separate Router. A customer CANNOT upgrade any Firmware on the modem or if is a Combo device. If one of the Favourite vendor has a bug with Portforwarding or something, your modem is pretty much paperweight unless Vendor is willing to fix it quickly and Comcast can push the FW to you quickly. All this can easily take 3+ months for Urgent bugs.

If you are buying new modems and are on service tier > 100 Mbps, Please buy 16x4 Bonding Modems as minimum

If you are on extreme 250 or 300 Mbps package, Please buy atleast 24x8 or 32x8 modem. 32x8 modems based off INTEL puma6 had a critical latency bug but I have heard it is fixed in the field now.

If you are on Gigabit, you kind of stuck with Comcast modem for now until they let people active DOCSIS 3.1 modems. They can activate for other tiers but NOT gigabit.

edit: grammar

The best thing anyone can do is swap out the junky cable modem + WiFi router combos they rent to you. They're horrible under standard usage, bad when lots of clients are connected, bad wifi range, low memory, require frequent reboots, etc.

For about $70 (about 5mos of rental charges) you can get a Surfboard barebones Docsis 3 modem that will vastly outperform whatever junk they rent out.

After that you could get a TP-Link Archer C7 for sub $80 that will have good range and performance for that price point.

So within about the first year you've broken even with vastly superior components and you'll be able to take them with you to any cable provider you wind up using in the future.

I get why most people don't do this, they don't even know it's possible, but I'm amazed when colleagues in the industry are still running the company hardware.

Yeah I own my own modem/router forced Comcast to setup my own stuff rather than rent from them but I made sure it was a Comcast compatible modem.

This is a thing I would kind of want to do, but I've never bothered to figure out how. Like how will I know if it's a compatible modem, or better than what's there? How do you configure it?

So those are my reasons.

http://mynewmodem.comcast.net/ Lists most of the modems you can purchase from amazon. They have a slightly larger list of supported modems but many of them are noy sold to the public like some Cisco models.

https://mydeviceinfo.xfinity.com/ will walk you through finding which devices your local service + speed work with. Spoiler: most DOCSIS 3.0 modems are compatible.

Buy it, unplug your existing modem, plug the new one in, and call Comcast. I had mine out of the box and up and running in all of 15 minutes (most of that was spent on hold and waiting for the modem to reboot).

http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-cable-modem/

You can figure this sort of thing out with less than 1 hour of effort.

https://www.xfinity.com/support/internet/list-of-approved-ca...

To configure it, you just plug it in. I think you may have to call them after you plugged it in and then activate it on their end.

The beauty is that (as far as my experience for the last ten years with Comcast for home and business in Seattle and Portland) I've never once had to do any configuration other than plugging it in while on the phone with support and reading off the various IDs.

The only thing I've ever needed was the serial numbers and such that are printed on the bottom of my modem.

Pro tip, the chat is much faster, tether to your phone for internet and do it via their web chat.

I replaced my router a few weeks ago (lightning!) on Comcast and the configuration was completely automatic. Maybe I had to enter my comcast id and password, but I didn't have to call anyone and it was done in just a few minutes. This was in Knoxville, TN.

I've been back on FiOS since we moved back to PDX last summer, so my last cable modem switcharoo was about 5 years ago in Seattle. It's likely they could've made it easier.

To that end, I've done the modem switch probably a dozen times for myself, family, or friends and I've never encountered any resistance from Comcast during the process. Though they did fat finger a MAC address or serial number one time.

Before going out and buying a modem, I would strongly recommend making sure through support that the modem you're planning on getting is ALSO compatible with the very specific data plans for now and for the foreseeable future. One of the interesting things I found was that the Comcast device compatibility site listed a modem I bought as compatible, but you can still wind up unable to get the speeds you're paying for because the specific profile that was listed for my account was not flagged for that modem even though the modem is actually capable of it (300/35 plan, which is a bit unusual). So I wound up returning my 24-channel DOCSIS 3.0 modem and buying a more expensive one on DOCSIS 3.1. The other option was to actually downgrade my plan to maybe 150 Mbps.

Changing my router was the best thing I have done to my internet connection, but somehow it never occurred to me to change my modem until I just read your comment. Er, duh! Ordering one now. Any recommendations from this list?: http://www.spectrum.net/support/internet/compliant-modems-ch...

I've always used Arris (sometimes branded as Motorola) and had consistently good results.

Today, from that list, I'd buy the Woot SB6183 ($51.09 on Amazon-ASIN B018IS1S4C) as that's what I've been running at home for 13 months without issue. (I upgrade about every 6-9 years. You caught me "just" after the latest one.)

It's a 16x4 modem, though when I use it on Comcast, Comcast operates it as a 16x3 (16 channels down, 3 channels up)

The Arris/Motorola Surfboard series have always been great for me. I think the biggest difference between the cheapest model and the most expensive one is that the most expensive one is capable of a theoretical max that is multiples of what Comcast even offers. So, it's technically more future proof. I've had the cheapest one forever and never had issues with it being slower than my pipe could deliver.

I've been using a Zoom modem for years now with no issues at all. The Surfboard series is also pretty well recommended by my friends in the industry.

I still prefer to avoid combo modems though, I find that the Wi-fi tech upgrades at a faster pace, and prefer to keep the devices separate rather than combined into one box. YMMV, do what makes sense for your setup.

Protip: buy used off of craigslist.

I've done this multiple times over the years and saved a bundle.

I hate that I've become an AT&T fanboy, but I have their Gigabit fiber service and use their router. The modem/router they gave me -- and don't charge an extra fee for it -- is in the worse possible place in my two story house. It's in a guest bedroom closet downstairs attached to the smart panel.

When I'm right under it, I can get 400Mbps u/d from my iPhone and my laptops. In the worse location in the house I get 120/120. My house is wired for gig-e throughout but I with that kind of wireless speed, I didn't bother about getting the more expensive Roku boxes with 10/100 Ethernet connections.

Of course I usually get 900+ u/d wired.

As of a couple weeks ago, you can buy a DOCSIS 3.1 modem. Supposedly they have AQM (i.e. bufferbloat mitigation). I don't know for sure, but I expect that the upstream AQM will work even if the ISP hasn't switched to DOCSIS 3.1 in your area.

This is definitely not a reliable test. You're doing a speed test, over WiFi on an iPhone 6s. There are so many factors that could contribute to slower speeds including frequency, interference, range, and devices connected (If they went from 802.11n AES+TKIP it can be bottlenecked to 54Mbps.) Also if they're on 802.11b/g/n compatibility mode and a 802.11g device is connected it can also bottleneck the device. I'm sure there are issues with Comcast but this blog post identifies none.

I think you have a point, however, those issues all exist regardless of the router/modem. If that is all you changed and the speeds dramatically changed, then it bears further investigation. I don't think the post is saying this is definitive. Merely that it bears further investigation. Where there is smoke there is fire.

This is not a widespread, comprehensive test but that doesn't mean it's not a reliable test of the limited situation described in the post.

The major different I have with your comment isn't the technical aspects but the fact that the average user isn't – and arguably shouldn't be – aware of any of those details. If everyone can get significant speed improvements simply by swapping out the access point because the defaults on the ISP-managed equipment aren't appropriate for normal usage, that's a big deal — especially since they charge $150 + $10/month for that service, which would more than cover some basic config management.

Is it possible your wireless channel was overused? Most of my neighbors have comcast, as do we. I've had poor coverage and connection also, couldnt even get our wireless printer to work anymore. I used a program called WifiInfoView and viewed how many nearby wireless networks there were, their signal strengths, and set my router to a channel that wasn't being used.

Cleared up all of our problems instantly. I would check this, perhaps his google modem was preset to another channel.

This is likely just the difference between a DOCSIS 2 vs DOCSIS 3 modem.

Regardless of which modem you use, Comcast pushes its own firmware patches that likely have rate limiting built in.

On the subject of class actions: it's most likely impossible.

In their terms of service they will undoubtedly state that you agree to go to arbitration rather than court, and they have you explicitly waive your right to a class action.

Also the terms of service makes it very clear that the speeds they quote on their ads are essentially entirely theoretical.

> they have you explicitly waive your right to a class action

Almost certainly not going to be upheld by a court if there is evidence of fraud.

> Also the terms of service makes it very clear that the speeds they quote on their ads are essentially entirely theoretical.

Completely irrelevant if you can prove that they purposefully implemented a scheme to throttle your speeds.

I'm with you, my Comcast bill is now $160 a month for internet and TV. However perhaps the old modem was not DOCSIS 3.0 and the new one is? I'm guessing the new modem is just better hardware thus the increased throughput. No grand conspiracy.

Go buy your own DOCSIS 3.0 modem from Amazon and stop paying the monthly rental.

Its one thing if their service is unreliable, but another when the hardware they rent us doesn't even support the service speeds they sell us.

Class action?

Nope. Good luck with that.

I just decided to jump on the cord cutting bandwagon. My bill was ~$180 and I was able to get it down to $97 for the "best Internet". My cost for PlayStation Vue is $29.99 plus $15 for HBO. It streams to the PS4 and Amazon Fire TV. I am very happy with the change simply because I am not giving Comcast more money than I have to.

I need sports though, that's the problem.

You can opt for the league-provided services, or if you look on the internet you'll quickly find services that are better than the officially-provided ones themselves.

In my experience the league sources usually black out local teams, which makes them useless for fans of local teams.

PS Vue has sports-they are running channels specifically for basketball during march madness.

It's almost hilarious how cheap and bad the Xfinity modem/router combo is. Any kind of configuration via the web interface is a dice roll on whether or not the settings actually take. If you're lucky, your configuration changes get applied, but don't expect them to be displayed.

I guess whatever little money it cost to build went into the annoyingly bright white LEDs on the front of the case.

Not really sure what the author is trying to achieve with this one - first off appears to be comparing wifi speeds which we all know is a fairly poor way to test a connection.

Second of all the speedtests shown are 3 months apart...

Switching to 5 GHz instead of 2.4 GHz has made this magnitude of difference for me in the past.

Today, at home, I haven't had dedicated internet connectivity for 4 years. I log in to the xfinitywifi SSID that some of my neighbors in my apartment complex are probably broadcasting via my parents' comcast account and get good speeds. I'm on it right now and speedtest.net shows 30 Mbps down, 2 Mbps up. Plenty enough for my purposes, including Netflix.

I switch to tethering on my AT&T device if needed for 15-25 GB 4G data each month; the "unlimited" plans offered by carriers today don't provide more than 10 GB of high speed data in contrast. Not sure how much longer this setup will work, but I plan on continuing it for as long as I can; the cost savings really add up.

A side-effect of this that I've noticed is increased operational awareness on my part. Comcast MITMs any unencrypted HTTP traffic and injects in a "powered by xfinitywifi" banner that is a great reminder to not trust the network. :)

Yes, this "xfinitywifi" public hotspot is enabled by default on many (all?) leased Comcast router-modems. Seems like many people in my complex are unaware or leave it open. I turn mine off.

You can find the best channel to use using one of these techniques: https://www.howtogeek.com/197268/how-to-find-the-best-wi-fi-...

Although, that article says you need a jailbroken iPhone to find the best wifi, it is possible to identify high traffic networks with your iPhone using the Airport Utility - https://forum.music-group.com/showthread.php?6603-TIP-Choosi...

I was in CA for a summer. My girlfriend at the time lives in SF. She was using AT&T until she had enough of the DSL performance, so I helped her switch to Comcast. Comcast would even charge us for WiFi, but we were able to keep the Wifi off the modem. Luckily we had a nice rep from Portland to work with us. The price has only gone up since signing up with Comcast, and service hasn't been good.

I live in NYC so TWC (now Spectrum) is a choice in my area. The service has been pretty good since their first major service line upgrade (probably around 2013, 2014). I get to speak with a customer representative and get a discount promo price every 12 months (very known trick for ISP, just call and tell them you wanted to cancel your ISP account, they will likely offer you a promo price). TWC even have a mobile app which I can use to check service status and even chat with the representative directly from the mobile chat! The app itself is slow kind of a crappy version, but hey, it's amazing.

When I moved to my new home, I bought motorola sb6141 modem instead of the stock version. I can tell you that the speed is consistent and noise level is low compared to my old modem. I understand environment (where I live) may matter, but I am happy with my own equipment.

TWC let me keep the factory modem in case I needed a replacement which is a nice touch. I have more faith in TWC than in Comcast. Just another customer rant.

Replaced my Motorola/Arris SB6121 with a Zoom cable modem, going from 4 channels down to 16.

A month later, I saw that Comcast was billing me $10/month for not returning "their" modem. Called and raised a little hell because I've never rented a modem from them in 20 years of service. Got some minor credits for the next 3 months.

Got the Zoom because I figured it would deliver more consistent bandwidth when the family is doing lots of Netflix at the same time. No real problems with the SB6121.

Another way to get the advertised speeds is to regularly call and complain. From my experience, they'll dial your speed up, just to stop you from calling in all the time.

You also need to keep in mind if you bought your own modem that you may need to upgrade the firmware (or worse case, a new modem) to get advertised speeds. This generally is advertised as 8x4 channels or better. My old surfboard tops out at 150Mbps.

You as the end user can't 'upgrade the firmware' in cable modems, it's all sent from the CMTS.

It's how they enforce "supported modems" - no firmware for your modem, you can't use it.

I've had a similar experience with Comcast in the past. The biggest problem with using my own Modem is pretty much every time I call support, they blame it on my Modem. This includes the time when the cable wire outside the building was disconnected by one of their Techs who was working on the neighbor's connection.

Class actions against Comcast should be a dime a dozen.

We had a Comcast SMC-D3G on Comcast Business. It's garbage. Once we pushed too many connections through it, it would crash and packet loss would skyrocket requiring a manual restart (unplug/replug). This is because it's also a very poor router that can't be changed to bridge-only. There's still plenty of these pieces of crap in the wild, and they also can't properly route ipv6.

If you're a business class customer that needs static ip's, you're stuck with Comcast hardware. Fortunately all my locations now can get away with dynamic ip's so we run our SB6121's (deprecated, but fine for 50/10 or 75/15 tiers).

The final bullshitty thing that's started in the past year is $100 per on-site visit if they can't prove the issue was caused by their network. I used careful wording there because if this is a peering/intermittent issue they'll come out next day just to pocket that charge and blame you.

Why not call for a technician? I mean if you're using their equipment and all, at least give them the chance to fix it.

They'll bill you more for an hour of a technician's time than the cost to just buy a new modem/router.

Not if it is their fault/equipment.

>Not if it is their fault/equipment.

That depends entirely on the technician you get. At least for Cox, it's up to the technician to determine if the customer foots the bill or not and while you might get a competent technician who will happily redo all of the outside wiring while he's there for free you might also get a technician from some third party contractor who doesn't even have the equipment to test anything and is just relying on the customer's modem for troubleshooting.

Just because it's their fault doesn't mean that they'll admit it or even fix it.

… and even if the technician does the right thing, there's no guarantee that the charge won't mysteriously show up on your bill next month unless you live in a city/state with very consumer-oriented regulators.

This person seems very confused as to how to verify the truth of something before calling for media attention.

I know Verizon at least is preparing for the day where each family member is watching their own 4K TV stream: 15.6 Mbps is required per stream for Netflix. It would be interesting how their "quantum gateway" performs, this one:

https://www.verizon.com/home/accessories/fios-quantum-gatewa...

Fios is great, but they were focused on the 4G LTE network for home internet instead of further fios rollout. Here is the router for this:

https://www.verizonwireless.com/home-office-solutions/verizo...

Never rely on your ISP to provide great wifi equipment. This is not something specific to Comcast. Generally, it seems residential ISPs are only on the hook for providing quoted speeds via a wired connection to their gateway.

This is why I always either disable the wifi from my ISP's modem/router combo and branch off my own wifi router from the modem's LAN or request a modem only device from the ISP and use my wifi router's LAN. The downside to the former case is that your wifi devices are now double NATed (unless you use a wireless bridge) which can be annoying if you want to forward ports (you now have to do it twice). The modem/router combo might not support disabling its LAN to act as a bridge very well.

That seems to be common practice, also in Europe, across providers. And a single look at the GPL source code for your cable modem usually offers the reason (ancient kernels, slow CPUs, more security nightmares than you ever wanted to see)... replace your provider-supplied modem by an AVM FritzBox Cable and boom, gone are the wifi and cable speed problems.

Not to mention that AVM has quite a good track record when it comes to security fixes... way better than every other SOHO router vendor I have encountered.

Downside: newer FritzBoxes are way less open than they used to be (no Telnet, no selfbuilt firmware support), and they can't do VLAN.

(Not employed or business related with AVM, just an extremely happy customer)

You pay for service, and the equipment is optional - the rental fee can be waived and you can provide your own equipment. The fact that your equipment works better is not a violation of their contract, unless they specifically said you would get 120Mbps with their equipment. Which they would never say, because there is no guarantee your computer can even handle that speed, and it's always been known that cable speeds vary per neighborhood and household.

So, no, there's probably not a class action case. Just stop renting crap equipment and buy a DOCSIS 3.0 modem and a router that does at least 150mbps.

I'll counter Jeffrey Martens' anecdotal evidence with my own. I've had Comcast in my last 3 residences, leasing equipment provided by Comcast. In each case, performance was as advertised.

I signed up for Comcast basic cable a few years ago because I was hosting a Superbowl party. I signed up in person at an xfinity store because I didn't want to wait around for shipping. Right after I told the dude at the desk I had a brand new HD TV that I was eager to watch the Superbowl on, he tried to send me home with a cable box that only had one output: (standard definition, analog) coax. I don't even know why they would still offer such a thing, but I had to fight with them to get a box that output HDMI.

If you were just getting basic cable, I don't think you'd get HD video... It might be part of the training to give crappy boxes to basic cable customers.

The Super Bowl is available through antenna.

...in HD!

Honestly it's bad everywhere. I'm lucky enough to have U-verse 1Gb fiber. I get around 95% of the speed, which is awesome. EXCEPT for some awful reason I'm required to use their modem/firewall combo. Even if I forward all IP traffic to my own router I still have to keep the AT&T router in front because it authorizes me on the network.

To make matters worse it exposes a management port for who-knows-why. I'm hoping somebody picks the thing apart and dumps the 802.1X certificate so I can use my own modem.

If you are in the UK and using Virgin, the very first thing you should do is buy any router other than their garbage SuperHub 3.0. I was getting a ~50ms ping on LOCAL NETWORK, and weirdly high packet loss over internet, after complaining to virgin they sent me another router, was exactly the same - there's plenty of threads on their forums complaining about the same thing.

Just buy anything other than their own hardware and the connection is brilliant.

I did the same thing, swapped out an xfinity provided cable modem for my own. I definitely have better speeds now. My modem supports more channels

I get 120 Mbps down on a 75 Mbps Xfinity plan. I think.

My bill says I have “Performance Pro Internet”, which appears to be specced for 75 Mbps download.

I'm using an Arris (née Motorola) SB6183 modem. fast.com and speedtest.net both report that I'm getting 120 Mbps down.

(I'm pretty sure that I signed up for 75 Mbps down, but Xfinity makes it really hard to figure out what service you're using.)

Comcast's business practices aren't great, but I will give them credit. I get every Mbps that they claim I am supposed to get. This is plugged into my router (Turris Omnia) and my cable modem (self-owned Arris SB6190).

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/13090043

Of course, there's always the suspicion that ISPs, including Comcast, give priority to the various speed-test sites...

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r28685577-Speed-comcast-spee...

You are using your own equipment, right? Thats the point of this post....their equipment doesn't support their service speeds, you have to use your own.

You're using a SB6190? You're probably not getting the Mbps you're supposed to be getting, at least not all the time.

Just Google "puma 6 issue" and see the vast issues that chipset has, and checkout http://www.dslreports.com/tools/puma6

Hey, another Omnia user! How are you finding it? Is lighttpd crashing for you?

I can confirm this on my end as well. Switching out Comcast equipment for my item router and modem has effectively doubled my speeds.

Umm, they ship a crappy radio in their wifi device. They know this, the technician "installing" it even told me not to use it.

I had nearly the exact same results after disabling wifi and patching in an Apple Airport Express that I could connect to using 5GHz spectrum.. Speeds jumped from 25Mbps down to ~95Mbps down and latency dropped from 20ms to 9ms.

I wonder how much of that has to do with their providing "xfinity" wifi to anyone nearby who wants to share your cable line?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xfinity#Xfinity_WiFi

FWIW Comcast claims this will not affect the speed [0]. At the low speeds in the OP's article, this is likely the case.

[0] https://www.xfinity.com/support/internet/xfinity-wifi-hotspo...

Just turn it off, I did when I was using Comcast equipment last year. You dont owe Comcast any favors.

I have a limited setback on my house and I swear when I replaced their combo router I stopped having people (late at night eating burgers and listening to loud music while browsing) randomly parked in front of my house (presumably they got signal on the street).

I'll never go back to that configuration again so it's not like I can retest.

She probably had an old DOCSIS 1 modem from a few years ago. You could only get 30MBPS with that. They usually tell you that on the phone when you try to upgrade, but they've been giving free upgrades without you asking in SF. I had to buy a DOCSIS 3.0 modem to get the best speeds.

I complained about my speeds and they upgraded my router to a newer one. I find it pretty unacceptable that when I'm renting equipment from them, they don't provide me the equipment that is the speed of the pipe I pay for unless I complain...

At a guess this is a result of Comcast using the absolute, most mindbogglingly cheap hardware on the planet Earth. Second to that I would guess some kind of incompetence, and only after that would I seriously entertain what amounts to theft.

You are probably right about cheap equipment and incompetence, but isn't it still fraud if they sell you something that they knowingly can't offer?

If I rent a car and pay extra for a 4WD, but the 4WD doesn't work, I want my money back. Is this different?

It's the same. You can sue for breach of implied warranty. They may try to get out of it by saying 'speeds up to'. But if the device can't do that then yes you'd have a good argument.

Well, that's not quite the same as fraud, which is a much higher bar to prove. I absolutely wasn't disputing that if you're not getting the advertised service, you should seek recourse, I was just disputing "fraud". It's the difference between being sold a lemon car, and being sold a car that someone turned the odometer back on.

My speedometer goes "up to" 180mph, but my car will certainly never get there. Is Volkswagen guilty of fraud? (Well, not in this particular case...)

They said 4WD, not "up to" 4WD. OTOH, they only say "up to" n mpbs.

If you want guaranteed minimum speeds, you can pay an order of magnitude more for a business class connection.

The great, vast majority of Comcast users are ignorant and get fleeced constantly (I firmly do believe the great majority are old people with their primary bandwidth "hogs" being an SD-broadcast Netflix TV show, 3 iOS apps / year, and a bank website login), so this practice of under-delivery visible to the consumer will probably never really stop (they're cash cows) until we get the FCC involved across the board showing it's a corporate policy to not deliver an advertised service. Unfortunately, they probably get around this too by putting so many disclaimers and exceptions in ads based around wi-fi inconsistencies and system loads that it makes any lawsuit about service levels impossible to prosecute successfully.

I'm not old or ignorant but I am a Comcast customer. Have to be because they're the only game in town.

Before switching modems, try to turn off QoS, its a setting that optimizes for voice and real-time communication... some how optimize for RTC means everything else is slowed down.

This happened to my friend too. He was arguing for a new modem. They said no there was no problem. So he replaced it with a non-comcast modem and poof max speed.

> "What do you say, do we have a nice class-action on our hands?"

No.

Honestly I'd be shocked if comcast isn't ripping everyone off in mulltiple ways. I hate that company.

Yes.

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