Comcast Broadband users

[Strong Bad]

For those using Comcast High Speed Broadband, check out the site below and read on. Comcast has been making infrastructure upgrades and that means their Broadband users download and upload speeds are increasing with no extra cost (yeah right, they'll F*** us somehow!).


http://www.dslreports.com/forum/rema...cast~mode=flat


If your area has been upgraded already, then go to a speed test site and do a test showing your current download and upload speeds. Then unplug your modem, router (if you're using one) and shutdown your PC. Wait about 30 seconds then turn on (in order) your modem (give that about 30 secs) then power on the router (again if you're using one) and finally boot your PC up.

Go back to the same speed test site and give it a whirl. Here are my before and after speeds (done within 15 minutes of each other):

Before: 2933 Down / 238 Up

After: 3803 Down / 348 Up

HELL YEAH! F*** DSL!


John

[Jstas]

Well, DSL is going through changes this year. Verizon is working on standing up an entirely new DSL service based of of a fiber network. This service includes Verizon's own Voice Over IP service plus a minimum average speed of 10mbps and it'll still be half the price of cable. You still won't have to share your connection with everyone else on the block and it comes all in one monthly bill. The extra nice thing is that because of VoIP, you won't incurr excessive long distance charges because you won't be dialing out of your local area.

So keep your cable. NJ and OR are the pilot states for this stuff so we will be up and running on it by August. The rest of the country gets upgraded fully in the next 2-5 years...depending on how far out in the sticks you live.

[Airplay355]

I pay $30 a month for cable....DSL is going to be $15 huh?

[amulford]

I'm there, John. I'm sorry, but f#ck the cable. I had it, and admit it was very fast, but when I dropped the TV service for sattelite they tried to jack up the price for IP to something like $60 a month (screw that).

I went to Verizon DSL, have three computers and a Xbox live ste up. I don't notice that much of a difference, especially for half the price.

[bobman1235]

Originally posted by Airplay355
I pay $30 a month for cable....DSL is going to be $15 huh?

$30??? F me. I pay like 45 for cable internet, and that's with a 5 dollar discount cuz I have regular cable service (another 50 bucks).

[Strong Bad]

Lots of discussion about the next generation Verizon FIOS vs Comcast services right here. Verizon won't have their service rolled out anytime soon in large enough areas.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/rema...cast~mode=flat

Realistically, everyday family users that surf the internet won't notice much or any speed difference. Me, I upload some rather large graphics files and things like that so I will notice the speed change. My before speed of 3 mbps download is more than fast enough. I want more upload speed which is the key!


John

[dorokusai]

Cable....DSL...who cares, fast is fast.

[Strong Bad]

Originally posted by dorokusai
Cable....DSL...who cares, fast is fast.

Polk...Bose...who cares, speakers are speakers.


John

[dorokusai]

That's a great analogy, you should get a copyright.

[AsSiMiLaTeD]

DSL can kiss my a$$. I live in a fairly new (5 years) subdivision and we can't get DSL, so I had to switch to cable, and I love it.

DSL cost was $30 a month + $15 month for the phone bill...

Cable is $40 a month and no phone bill (we have cell phones anyway, we just use those)...

[mantis]

Actually I had Cable and DSL at the same time to do speed tests. Downloads on cable are much faster. Using the net surfing was about the same. Uploads where faster on cable. Loading high bandwidth sites cable smoked.

I didn't care for the DSL service. I had cable first then verzion offered a free months trail of DSL. Hell for less money a month and if I liked it enough I was going to switch. I kept cable.

Now I also switched over from Dss to cable and I'm for the most part happy. They have more HD channels and locals in HD. Super bowl is here and the playoffs where great in HD.

You really get what you pay for. If you never had High speed and coming from dial up, dsl is the damn bomb. But if you already have cable and download alot, or run multible computers and game systems, cable is the way to go.

Then again price is always a factor. If you can afford the extra cash for cable.

DSL was only 768 and cable is now running 4 megs.

Dan

[steveinaz]

I've got Cox cable and love it. After suffering with 28.8 dialup for 5 years, cable is the ****.

After building my latest computer and loading XP, I went to the Windows update sight to capture all the updates. I needed 41.5 Mbytes of upgrades.....it took 1 minute and 40 seconds to download the updates!!!!

I can remember on dial-up, it taking me an hour to download ICQ (4.9Mb).

[bknauss]

I could either have Verizon for $30 a month or Comcast for whatever they choose to give it to me for at this time of the day. I chose Verizon since I hate Comcast... I hate the quality of service and I hate the "written" monthly costs vs. what they will give it to you for if you threaten to get rid of the service. Hello D*TV once I move out of my apartment.

As for the speed difference, unless you're downloading movies/music or have a ton of computers running at once on the internet, I don't think most people would notice a difference. That's my 2 cents at least.

[Jstas]

Geez, you guys are getting raped on your DSL bills.

I get 3.5 mbps download rates and about 350 kbps upload rates off of DSL. Cable cost about $65 a month here for service that is similar on paper but pretty damn poor in reality.

Regular DSL cost, depending on the options you have, costs anywhere from 20-35 a month here. But I get a discount because all of my service is through Verizon for local, long distance and DSL plus I have a corporate discount through my place of employment. My DSL costs come out to about $12.37 a month.

Besides, Comcast is our local cable monopoly. If you want to network several computers and run a private mail or FTP server, they will charge you for each machine on your network. Verizon doesn't care how many machines you have on a network that is sharing the connection. I pay one fee a month for teh connection and that's it.

As far as timelines for Verizon's FIOS goes, they are delibratly taking thier time to roll it out. The FIOS stuff is not just for computer geeks and thier DSL. They are changing thier ENTIRE phone system. There are alot of other services that they need to make sure tehy have working properly besides FIOS based DSL. The DSL speeds are only a happy little by-product.

I also agree with bknauss. Verizon took thier criticism seriously about customer service and they made HUGE changes. You can call them at any time of the day or night and get the help you need from a pleasant person. It makes dealing with them so much easier and I would gladly give my money to a company like that even if thier service was not the highest performing service out there.

Besides, if I want to download something huge, I have a gigabit copper connection to my desk which is tied directly into our WAN fabric that has it's own digital trunk. A 41.5MB download runs down in about 23 seconds on average. Granted, I am sharing the bandwidth with about 5,000 other users.

[fireshoes]

All the cable/dsl comparisons are almost meaningless unless the speeds are the same. I mean obviously a 4.0mbps line is going to smoke a 768kbps line, whicever one is cable or dsl. I was really hurting when I moved from Des Moines to St. Louis and had to go from 3.0mbps to *cough* 384kbps. Thank god I just found out yesterday they finally got a new remote station in and I can go back up to 3.0. Yay!