Comcast current speeds?

[teko.livejournal.com]

 My household's connection speeds with Comcast seem to have gone downhill steeply recently, to the point where I've been comparison shopping RCN and Clear. Comcast says that they're doing service in the Somerville/Davis Square area and have been for the past week or so, with an indefinite completion date. Have other Comcast users in the area had their quality degrade recently as well?

Comments

[duffless2323.livejournal.com]

Hey, if you switch to RCN I'd love to refer you, I think I get money off my bill.

I've had both RCN and Comcast. I find the RCN internet faster and more reliable, but I liked comcast's on demand and chanel lineup a bit better. I've not had RCN's internet fail yet, knock wood!!

[artguychris.livejournal.com]

Now you've jixed it! Failure is imminent!

[findingthegirl.livejournal.com]

Also, RCN is a whole lot cheaper than Comcast if you're just getting internet. I think we save at least twenty bucks a month now that we've switched over.

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

I've noticed Comcast slowdowns (well, almost stopages) in the Newton area over the last couple of days. When this happens, I can generally get a traceroute to one of their DNS servers but not the other. I have no idea if all the problems are related.

[jamiesquared.livejournal.com]

I have had issues with RCN the last week or so. Our internet slows down or goes down for a little while, the cable TV service goes in and out as well. I did talk to them and was told they are experiencing issues from all of the snow/ice and it should resolve within the week.

My grandmother upstairs has Verizon and she was having issues too. Her phone line did not work for 5 days and most of my street had issues too.

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

What speeds are you getting (http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/)?

[teko.livejournal.com]

At the moment, between 9 and 11 Mbps. But in evenings, when three people are online at the same time, the bandwidth speed drops heavily and wireless starts cutting out.

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

Wireless cutting out sounds like a different issue.

[geekpixie.livejournal.com]

We've not been having issues, that said, I know a lot of people have had issues wih cable internet and phone due to snow, ice, and water affecting their lines.I can't speak for a comparison to RCN though.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

YES. We've been having issues, only at night, for a week or so now. We lose connectivity for a few seconds to a minute or so, repeatedly. It's getting really tiresome.

[teko.livejournal.com]

This, plus intermittent slow-downs, sounds exactly like what I'm experiencing. Thanks!

[maelithil.livejournal.com]

Same here. I work from home and I haven't noticed any problems during the day, but at night my partner claims the internet is being slow and funky.

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

Do all your neighbors use Netflix streaming at the same time?

[maelithil.livejournal.com]

I have no idea? Maybe they all play WoW.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

I have been corrected: the problem is only -mostly- at night; sometimes it also happens during the day (but with less frequency).

Specifically, my housemate has the following technical report: "Happens during the afternoon occasionally, but -much worse- in the evening until at least 0400 (and maybe past that; don't know). Symptom is modem completely loses sync and flashes its lights, then goes through the whole "No sync" "Access denied" "Downloading parameters" dance (visible via its diagnostic menu at 192.168.100.1) until it reacquires block sync and a network ID. S/N seems fine all throughout; bandwidth when the modem is online hasn't changed since installation and is as fast as the wired-side connection (e.g., excellent), making me extremely dubious that this is a poor signal, or water in a coupling, or anything like that. At the peak of suckitude, loses sync every 2-3 minutes and takes 2+ minutes to reacquire it.

Started maybe 2-3 weeks ago after being rock-solid for many months (since installation of this modem, after it replaced another modem, which was itself -fine- until a similar bout of 2-3 -months- of dropouts, but Comcast insisted on replacing the modem when I complained and -then- figured out a week later that surprise! it was their sucky upstream hardware all along and not the modem). Note that this is obviously -connectivity- and not (for example) their DNS servers sucking and falling over as they often do---I don't use Comcast's DNS at all. If this is somehow peak-traffic-related, it's some upstream thing completely falling over under load and knocking modems offline---things don't just get slow, the modem itself is essentially losing carrier or block sync and having to reacquire it."

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

they're apparently being inundated with calls, they're aware SOMETHING is going on, but insist it's not them, until i ask for a higher level tech, and they grudgingly admit that something in their infrastructure is not handling SOMETHING. possibly the a/c for the regional routers, but they don't know.

the annoying part is they KNOW this is an issue, but play coy... please reboot your computer, please do this, all the while they can see the s/n ratio is poor, or flatlines on their end... nice. just playing the "please wait game".

3+ weeks of this... i'm asking for a full month credit later.

#

[ritcey.livejournal.com]

I was having similar problems & put in a service call. The culprit: squirrels gnawing my cable (no, really). Tech ran a new cable from the pole to the house & things have been solid since then (25Mpbs down / 7 up; latency is consistent).

It seemed to get worse at night for whatever reason - that's when I really would lose sync, etc. Maybe water in the exposed cable freezing at night, or some such.

I also had water take out something on the pole a couple months ago. Again, a quick swap and things were back to normal. I gotta say, for all the grief they get, Comcast service has been very responsive for me.

HTH

[laryu.livejournal.com]

I haven't had any recent issues in my Comcast service, for what it's worth. I work from home days and evenings, and have seen any differences.

[brunohall.livejournal.com]

I've been having issues too but for longer time, I've been having issues with Comcast since November, they came to my house 4 different times and they can't find the issue.
I've been staying with them in spite of the issues, but I'm getting tired I'm looking for another internet company.

Why doesn't Verizon offer Fios in Somerville????

[gruene.livejournal.com]

Median income isn't high enough for Fios.

Despite massive massive subsidies to the tune of billions of dollars the telecoms have collectively decided that fiber is a product that only wealthy suburbanites will buy and have no intention of servicing urban and rural areas. Not until they can shake down the feds for billions more anyway.

[blalor.livejournal.com]

It's available in Medford, and our median income is quite a bit less than Somerville's…

Fios

[bostonartist.livejournal.com]

FYI... Verizon is not rolling out FIOS anywhere anymore. They found it to be a losing proposition (not sure why). Also, in the early days of Verizon Fios, Verizon refused to agree to contribute to SCAT. RCN and Comcast contribute to funding SCAT. The city would not grant Verizon a license to roll out Fios over this issue.

[littlecitynames.livejournal.com]

Our Comcast was messed up for the last couple of weeks (down for a good hour or two at a time), but a technician fixed it on Saturday and we've had no problems since. See if you can get a tech in there to check it out at least!