BoatBanter.com - View Single Post

Mr. Luddite[_4_]

On 2/27/2018 5:13 PM, wrote:
On Tue, 27 Feb 2018 13:49:43 -0500, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

On 2/27/2018 1:17 PM, wrote:
On Tue, 27 Feb 2018 11:36:00 -0600, amdx wrote:

I have 30Mbps

I often wonder how that translates to the real world. I had a lot of
conversations with various tech support groups leading up to switching
my web host and the problems that prompted that.
The consensus was running a speed test to your ISPs test site was
meaningless other than what the max is you can get. When you go to 3d
party sites, that is a test of your servers and their servers but the
real issue is what you can actually get when talking to a web site or
other service. I know my news server is not even close to being able
to keep my 10mb pipe full. I have also had times when Amazon was not
able to keep a stream going without buffering, even tho I still had
plenty of capacity on my end. (I could start a Netflix). It was just a
new show on Prime and I am guessing they were slammed.
That huge capacity may be good for multiple users hitting multiple
byte hungry sites but I am not sure it is of a lot of value for 1 or 2
users. My wife's place was running the whole club on one Comcast line
and they finally had to buy another one, not because of throughput but
simply because one IP address could not support the number of unique
sub net IPs they had on the LAN. Granted all of them were not
streaming cat videos on Facebook but it was more than a few.

Years ago when we wintered in Florida we had DSL because cable was not
available. It worked ok but videos and HD media was not as
popular and as heavily downloaded back then. When I opened the guitar
shop in 2009 the building was not wired for cable so I had to get DSL
again. That's when I really starting to notice the difference between
the shop's DSL Internet speed and the speed of Comcast cable we had at
the house.

I used to update the shop's website daily and the program I used
reloaded all of the website's content which would take forever on DSL.
I ended up doing it at home after the shop closed. On cable the
complete site would upload in less than 30 seconds. At the shop it
sometimes took 5-10 minutes and often it would hang up and I'd have to
start all over again.

There is a difference, especially when more and more devices are added.
Now with two or cell phones constantly connected, multiple computers,
tablets, Smart TVs, etc., I can't see how DSL can be quick enough, but I
don't have it anymore so I don't know.

They are making DSL faster than it used to be. That is probably the
difference. From what I can see it takes about 3mb to stream HD and
that used to be fast DSL. Now I get a solid 10. We can stream 2 shows
at once and I am still browsing. My problem with Comcast has always
reliability. They are still running on the same "plant" Media One put
in 20 years ago when 8mb was fast broadband.
The speed is good if your neighbors are not banging it too hard since
you are sharing the pipe but they are down a lot and not real
responsive about fixing it. My wife used to fight with them about once
a week and she had a commercial account plus 799 residential
customers.

I am not promoting Comcast by any means but the problems you cite must
be somewhat unique to your area. Up here Comcast has been very
reliable. Really can't remember the last time it was down for any length
of time since we moved here 2 years ago. It might occasionally drop for
a minute or two if Comcast is working on a distribution amplifier nearby
but even that is very rare. It even has worked fine in a major
ice/snowstorm last winter when we lost power for a few hours. Plugged
the router, main cable box and a TV into the generator and everything
was fine.