Lately, I have been getting less than stellar speed from comcast.

I recently discovered I was on a new subnet, a 24. vs a 67.

Reason is, they finally are cutting over to the comcast stuff rather than the AT&T stuff.

SO I am getting Wonderful ping rates and wonderful download and upload speed for the first time in 5-6 years, actually getting what I am paying for. That is until Thursday night, of last week.

So, I call comcasts less than helpful, helpless desk. We go thru all the motions... etc. I finally am able to verify for them my proper info.

At best I was getting 1.33Mbps download speed, 200Kbps upload. Way off the mark from 4.4Mbps/768Kbps advertised. I then ask to talk to the kind and surprisingly clueful person's supervisor. I get through in about 2 minutes to him. (Yes badge numbers and everything, a confirmation e-mail)

Evidently, they were looking for someone that KNEW a bit about computers and networking, that was in one of troubled area. I got a Tech Visit scheduled at my discretion. I said 5-7 tomorrow night. (last night was when they showed up). To my amazement they brought out Big guns. A Trainer/Lead tech, his newbie, Thier supervisor and another person from Engineering, who appeared to not used to getting dirty regular like, having on a White long sleeve shirt and tie.

They had a Waveform analyzer that cost >$50,000 and another Wave Analyzer from "W.I.N.G.S." (I don't know didn't ask), the Engineering guy was doing most of the testing and shunting operations. The Lead guy rewired my house, from the street to my modem. (usually the won't do that) I got premium wire too, I have never seen this grade of Cable wire. It had 2 steel wires on it. 1 as part of the external casing and spiraled around the cable, and one inside, bound to the inside stuff. to keep it from shrinking or stretching. Evidently also to be able to with stand a falling branch without damage.

They compared before and after measurement, signal to noise ration went up a "WHOLE" dB. If you know about dB, you know that it take 3.03dB to double a signal and 10dB to make the signal 10 times hotter.

They then asked me to pummel a couple of local resources (here in GR) to get a real throughput test. Well, it was WORSE! 900Kbps/110Kbps... YIKES. They then called a number, had someone replace a single part on the DOCSIS PSR, and Voila I get back up to 2.13Mbps/300Kbps. Livable.

They then explain to me about thing, I told them what I knew about the setup they are using (they were amazed I knew so much just from listening on the Wire with my linux machine), they thanked me for my time, then promptly told me until the roblems in the area are fixed, I will credited for everyday from now until it is fixed (they estimated 2 weeks).

The story they said, is that Comcast decided to replace Existing Hardware with with Newer hardware from Motorola, the chose not to re-wire GR/suburbs as that would cost to much. So, they are running 860MHz multiplex signals on 500MHz rated infrastructure. To save money. Well, with the new hardware problems and the cost of chasing everything down, them working 14 hour days 7 days a week, they have already spent more than what it would have cost to just "over-wire" IOW, hang new and change to it as techs goto customers for fixing stuff. Yes they have mutiple systems then, but within 2 years they could switch completely over, at their discretion.

I'll get my speed back soon, I hope.