Comcast Extreme 50
- Thread starter jgoff14
- Start date
Twist86
Active Member
The 50mb connection they sell you is a THEORETICAL speed. This means that you COULD get up to 50mb but your not guaranteed 50mb. This imho is a rip off but not enough people force them to be honest.
Few issues can be this.
1) Old Lines / Old Area
2) Heavy Traffic Area
3) Over Loaded Box (added to many houses)
4) To far from the box
5) Just poor luck.
One thing you can usually do is get the tech to run new cable through your house and see if that helps. I had bought the 20mb connection package a few years back and they replaced ALL my lines (from modem to splitter box) and nothing helped. I found out years later my area had old lines and the whole area had issues because of it.
Depending on how far your grandparents live they might be connected to a better box.
Since then I have moved to a brand new house in a new area and I bought a 12mb speed from Mediacom (sister company of Comcast I think) and I get exactly 12mb speeds.
Few issues can be this.
1) Old Lines / Old Area
2) Heavy Traffic Area
3) Over Loaded Box (added to many houses)
4) To far from the box
5) Just poor luck.
One thing you can usually do is get the tech to run new cable through your house and see if that helps. I had bought the 20mb connection package a few years back and they replaced ALL my lines (from modem to splitter box) and nothing helped. I found out years later my area had old lines and the whole area had issues because of it.
Depending on how far your grandparents live they might be connected to a better box.
Since then I have moved to a brand new house in a new area and I bought a 12mb speed from Mediacom (sister company of Comcast I think) and I get exactly 12mb speeds.
bomberboysk
Active Member
Something else to consider, is if you are using a separate router from the modem, many consumer routers can't handle 50mbps routing speeds. But the biggest thing is that as Twist86 said, you aren't guaranteed 50mbps, that's the maximum speed you will get. In addition to line replacement in the house (i gained about 5dbvm when i replaced the ~25 year old RG59 with quad shielded RG6), is request a new drop to your house if its beyond 5-10 years old or so, as bad weather can degrade that cabling relatively quickly, and RG59 was still in heavy use even 5 years ago for drops to houses, while modern drops are generally RG6, or in some cases (generally drops over 100ft in length) RG-11 may be used. Personally, i saw a gain of about 9 dbvm just from a replacement of ~10 year old RG59 with RG6, and ended up with a 0.0-0.1 dbvm signal reading on the cable modem between those two additions (0 +/- 7 dbvm is the sweet spot for a cable modem, closer to zero you are the better). These can help to an extent--but it won't fix cable degradation in the lines surrounding your house.
Well it turns out that my modem's boot file was set for the performance / 20 settings and they couldn't get it to change. They removed my account, replaced it all as it should be and... http://www.speedtest.net/result/1241582476.png
That's a nice speed. That translates to ~7 MB/s. You won't have problems doing much of anything lolz I doubt you'll ever even go above 2 or 3 MB/s, though.
Motoxrdude
Active Member
This^^^
That's the thing I hate about comcast. You can get up to those speeds, but the truth of the matter is you probably never will. With comcast, you share the same connection with all your neighbors. Each region is only allocated so much bandwidth, so if a lot of people in your region are using their internet, it cuts into your bandwidth. I switched to ATT's uverse and they ran all fiber optic cable and I get the full 25mb/s I pay for all the time.
i was concerned about my neighbours but as it turns out there are only 3 of about 200ish houses in my area that are comcast customers. for some reason their computers say 'we arent serviceable' so everyone has qwest dsl. there is me, a guy 3 doors down and the house behind me the tech said. i tried downloading gta 4 off steam, streaming netflix on my comp and ps3, and browsing the web on the wifes laptop with NO issues. i'm very pleased and super excited to start playing around with it a little more!
linkin
VIP Member
Congrats
I have heard many a horror story about Comcast's support though. People say all is fine until there's a problem... I guess they are like TPG are here, basement prices and non-existant support unless you ring the TIO
