Wildly Inconsistant Comcast Speeds

[multimedia_geek]

I recently transferred schools and just subscribed to Comcast's 50/10 Mbps for $29.99 deal Monday. When it works the speeds are impressive (60/13 Mbps) but they don't last. As the title says, for a bit I can be getting 60 Mbps down and for no reason I can see, my speeds drop down to under 10 Mbps. Sometimes my ping shoots up to 500+ ms. This occurs both wireless (Netgear R7000 - brand new) and wired directly into the modem (roommate's previous Motorola SB 6121). I spent over an hour with basic support yesterday power cycling, reregistering, and sending some 'powerful signals' to the modem. Nothing has cured this. They scheduled a tech to come out Friday but let me know if it was my equipment that I would be charged for it. If they pull that stunt I will threaten to use their 30 day guarantee and leave with a full refund but I really don't want to put my hand into that can of worms. Does it sound like a modem or service problem to you guys? Any ideas on how to cure this?


Thanks Ahead!

 

[fistv]

When I first got a cable modem at home I noticed a funny/annoying thing, once school got out and the kids got home my modem speeds dropped dramatically. I was working out of my house so I did not really notice it that much as I was pretty much done with my work day by 4am-1pm. Then picked up new customer and worked much later, painful it was after ~2:30pm.
See if you can track the times your speed goes in the dumpster and when it's fastest.

 

[multimedia_geek]

When I first got a cable modem at home I noticed a funny/annoying thing, once school got out and the kids got home my modem speeds dropped dramatically. I was working out of my house so I did not really notice it that much as I was pretty much done with my work day by 4am-1pm. Then picked up new customer and worked much later, painful it was after ~2:30pm.
See if you can track the times your speed goes in the dumpster and when it's fastest.

I can do that. I guess in a college town they can be slammed at 11:30 PM when I was on the phone with them and at 8:00 AM when I was getting ready to get out for class. It's just odd that one minute I am getting a full 60 Mbps and the next my ping is sitting at 600 ms and download has dropped to 5 Mbps. It was also weird that most of the time (unless the ping count was high which happened about 25% of the time) my upload speeds were untouched running at 10+ Mbps.

I did get back to my apartment about 45 minutes ago in between classes to grab my laptop and noticed my speeds had normalized back to 50+ Mbps.

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
If the pattern of speed fluctuation follows the time of day, it is caused by heavy subscriber
traffic. If you keep bugging the isp, they may assign you different tier channel(ip port).

 

[multimedia_geek]

When I first got a cable modem at home I noticed a funny/annoying thing, once school got out and the kids got home my modem speeds dropped dramatically. I was working out of my house so I did not really notice it that much as I was pretty much done with my work day by 4am-1pm. Then picked up new customer and worked much later, painful it was after ~2:30pm.
See if you can track the times your speed goes in the dumpster and when it's fastest.

Hi,
If the pattern of speed fluctuation follows the time of day, it is caused by heavy subscriber
traffic. If you keep bugging the isp, they may assign you different tier channel(ip port).

It is based on the time of day. I got back right around 8 tonight and it's running right around 10 Mbps after being fine all afternoon. I'm going to let the tech come and I'll get explain that and they can fix it however they see fit. If I have some free time tomorrow I might even swing by the Comcast office and see if they can make any changes.

 

[Terry Kennedy]

I recently transferred schools and just subscribed to Comcast's 50/10 Mbps for $29.99 deal Monday. When it works the speeds are impressive (60/13 Mbps) but they don't last. As the title says, for a bit I can be getting 60 Mbps down and for no reason I can see, my speeds drop down to under 10 Mbps. Sometimes my ping shoots up to 500+ ms. This occurs both wireless (Netgear R7000 - brand new) and wired directly into the modem (roommate's previous Motorola SB 6121).

You should be able to access the Motorola modem's information page at http://192.168.100.1 - look at the signal and logs pages to see if anything corresponds with the times you're having problems.

Also, what are you using for a speed test site? You should start with http://speedtest.comcast.net, as other (off-net) speed test sites may have their own bottlenecks outside Comcast. I also have Comcast 50/10 (but Business Class) and when Comcast was having their pissing match with Netflix / Cogent, I would occasionally see speedtest results as low as a half a Mbit/sec on the off-net test servers.

The only persistent performance problem I've run into is that the node that services my area had a problem where it was overheating and having problems (it is pole-mounted 2 blocks from here). While they were deciding what to do about it, Comcast ran fiber which ends at the pole in front of my building - I'm told that I'll be getting my own node later this fall.

 

[multimedia_geek]

The tech that came told me everything on my end looked fine. He said he had a similar complaint very recently and he would setup an Xfinity tech to check out the node and it should be fixed in the next day or two. If not call again for another appointment. Even when my speed tests were high in the afternoon he noticed that the speeds would vary widely during the test. He told me that is indicative of a faulty node, especially when considering the rest of the evidence. Thanks all for your input.

 

[multimedia_geek]

You should be able to access the Motorola modem's information page at http://192.168.100.1 - look at the signal and logs pages to see if anything corresponds with the times you're having problems.

Also, what are you using for a speed test site? You should start with http://speedtest.comcast.net, as other (off-net) speed test sites may have their own bottlenecks outside Comcast. I also have Comcast 50/10 (but Business Class) and when Comcast was having their pissing match with Netflix / Cogent, I would occasionally see speedtest results as low as a half a Mbit/sec on the off-net test servers.

The only persistent performance problem I've run into is that the node that services my area had a problem where it was overheating and having problems (it is pole-mounted 2 blocks from here). While they were deciding what to do about it, Comcast ran fiber which ends at the pole in front of my building - I'm told that I'll be getting my own node later this fall.

I used both speedtest.net and Comcast's speedtest systems. It was bad enough Netflix and MLB.TV would have issues buffering and playing crappy quality: something that shouldn't happen on a 50 Mbps line. I'm paying for 50 and should get 50 or dang close to it 24/7.