I hate Comcast

Thanks to the speedtest.net iphone app, I have been monitoring my Comcast Business Class internet speeds and have been mighty upset with the results.

I had originally wanted DSL again, having had it for quite a few years and being quite happy with the performance and speed at the time. Unfortunately, upon moving into my new home I found that DSL couldn’t get past 1.5 Mbps tops for me. So my only other option was to go with Comcast.

Now, I knew that cable internet was a shared resource locally, and I wanted to not have to worry about neighbors sucking down all the available bandwidth. So I figured I would go for the “Business Class” internet at 16 Mbps down even though the price was more expensive than the residential version. I figured that I could expect a better level of service since I was paying more for a business account.

WRONG.

Below are graphs of my internet speed performance for December 19th to now (blue line is download speed, red line is upload speed, and orange horizontal line is download average):

Despite paying more for a business class internet at 16 Mbps down, I have been seeing absolutely atrocious results. My average speed since the 19th of December has been 3.1 Mbps! Less than 1/5th of the advertised speed! They actually consider this “Business Class” service?! I feel bad for what the residential users nearby might have to deal with…

My ping latency is no better at all, and just plain depresses me. The average ping reported over the same time period was over 250ms! I haven’t seen ping times like that since playing Quake 2 over dialup with friends over a decade ago.

The sad thing here is that the service used to be pretty ok. For two years they managed to at least deliver some semblance of service close to what they were advertising. Here’s hoping that a few technical support calls will get someone out here to correct this ASAP. Stay tuned.