Comcast vs Fiber

I recently hooked up internet in a location without Fiber and had to go to Comcast. It’s the first time I’ve used their service since I was in high school so I was hoping it had improved.

Surprisingly they said I could get 20 Mbit fiber which was awesome. My fiber was only 15 Mbit. So I got everything setup and quickly ran a speed test

Comcast 20/5

Advertised: 20/5
Actual: 5/2

Strangely I only got 5 Mbit. I thought it might be the server so I hoped on my old fiber connection and ran the same test:

BroadWeave 15/15

Advertised: 15/15
Actual: 13/10

Traffic Shaping

I was disappointed by the big loss of speed from Comcast. I expected them to fall short of advertised (everyone does) but to fall all the way down to 5? I lost 75% of my speed while fiber sat around 15% loss. That’s awful but at least I should be able to stream video.

I connected to my file server which is where I store my legally obtained digital content and started streaming. Uh-oh, even though the server can pump out 1500 KB/s I can only get 125 KB/s when going through Comcast. I checked from a few other locations and got stellar speeds which means Comcast is traffic shaping. Other locations give me quite a bit better speed, in the 1500 KB/s range but when I hit my server all of the sudden traffic shaping kicks in and my speed tanks.

Monopoly

Enjoy your monopoly now Comcast, or should I say Xfinity, because as soon as anyone has choice it will quickly become apparent that your internet offering is subpar. I don’t need a company deciding what traffic of mine is worth my bandwidth, that’s my business. Further, I think I ought to make a complaint to the BBB about your outrageous speed discrepancies.