I (still) hate Comcast

This just keeps getting sadder.

I finally did hear back from Mark Casem (who posted a comment on my earlier entry “I hate Comcast”) and was told that he would look into the problem with my local Comcast guys. They did finally send someone out who determined that something was wrong with my line, and they sent a maintenance crew over to apparently fix it.

I say apparently because, well, have a look at my latest numbers (allow me to remind you that I am paying for 16 Mbps Business Class connection) for January 5 - 20:

And these are just the latest numbers since I last blogged about this problem. For comparison, the previous average from the last post was 3.1 Mbps. The current average as evidenced above shows an average now of 2.6 Mbps.

Not surprisingly, my latency has also gotten worse overall:

Previously, the average latency was 254ms, and now I am showing 297ms. I guess you can pretty much rule out any chance of playing an online game where latency matters (in fact, these ping times are closer to what I used to get playing Quake 2 on a dial-up connection!

I am trying to be understanding here, and as patient as possible. I have given them a couple of chances to come and fix this now, and things are only seeming to get worse. I will continue to call support while this speed is so abysmal with the hopes that they track this problem down and get it resolved ASAP (and I hope the billing department can help make this right for the lost bandwidth so far).

I just can’t fathom the thought of a business having to deal with this type of sub-par performance for their internet. My recommendation at this point would be for any business even thinking about using Comcast as their internet provider is to NOT do it. DSL may be slower overall, but at least it’s consistent and the bandwidth is all yours as opposed to a shared resource with your neighbors.

Just to keep things up to date, here is the total of my current averages from December 19 to yesterday (January 20):

Now I ask you, as a business paying for a 16 Mbps connection, does this even remotely seem reasonable?

I desperately want to say that this all gets fixed in a timely manner, but things are not looking good. Stay tuned for more as the story develops…