Comcast XFINITY → [Speed] after speed "upgrade", Skype drops, need HELP!

Signal looks fine. Power levels are approaching +10 where you'd start to worry, but unless they are swinging a lot you should be ok.

Have you called to ask for your upstream SNR?

Thanks, just called them. They say upstream SNR = 38.3 and downstream SNR = 37.9

Those look good. That's one of the highest uSNR's I've seen on here BTW

What are the odds that the rep just *made it up* ?? Wouldn't be the first time eh'...

LOL true

Thanks for your patience with this speed issue, our engineers are look into the problem. As you can see here the signals are all good so for the moment we will investigate the cause of the issue. -ComcastVic

It'd be nice if Comcast could have a user-accessible trouble-shooting page with info like that.

Thanks, that's good to know Vic. Meanwhile, I just did another test here:


Still no good.

Also for some who care, I did the test with Firefox 19.02, the latest non-beta. I finally gave in and upgraded from 12 only because 12 started having problems with simple font rendering. And p.s. only one extension, "Copy URL+", wasn't auto-magically working., fixed that 'tho.

Out of curiosity, try the Visualware quality test.

Java is required. If you have it disabled, you can enable it in FF from Tools/Add-Ons/Plugins tab. ENABLE "Java (TM) Platform SE x Uyy". When done, you can disable it again (a good idea given all the zero-day exploits.)
Go to »myspeed.visualware.com
Click on North America
Find the yellow pushpin closest to you (hover mouse over it to see location). Dulles, VA may be best for East coast.
After the regular speed test loads (blue/red), click the Quality link in a box near the upper right.
The quality test is yellow/green.
Run the test.
When done, it will show another small box with error counts for retransmits and other issues.

Thanks but Java's not installed, not wanted.

ok this is really annoying. I'm uploading a 9.5MB video of my grandson to my Dropbox. I started it maybe 15 minutes ago. The Dropbox tray item reports it's uploading at a speed of .8kb/sec and there are 2 hours left.

Make sure Dropbox doesn't have it's upload automatically limited (I think it's that way by default).

In preferences -> Bandwidth -> Upload Rate -> Don't limit.

Thanks. I did/do have it set to "Don't limit", so now I've started up the Dropbox sync again. I don't just leave it on.

Meanwhile, I finally gave in and set up a Tech Home Visit from CC on Friday. Even if it works I'll be disputing any billing for it. Their March 2nd "upgrade" caused all this. Before that, a 10 meg Dropbox upload might take just a few minutes, maybe ten or twelve. C'est la Vie, they can carry the visit charge until and after I'm dead.

Had the home visit yesterday, nearly 2 hours, seemed to be a very thorough check of all the wiring all the way from up a tree off my property right to the gateway-pc-ethernet, no problems found, but still an unfixed very slow upload speed. The final straw was doing the Xfinity speedtest on the wireless laptop in the house. It was around 35 down and 5 up!! So he concluded it's just something in my desktop's much-less-vanilla-than-the-laptop's Win7 that is not agreeing with the March 2nd firmware update (Docsis 6?). Comcast doesn't track those sorts of issues down, after all the can only plan for reasonably vanilla OS installs. He did suggest a possible security software conflict, especially if I run double.

Today I will check the speedtest after a Safe Mode Boot with Networking.

Booted into Safe Mode with Networking:

Ping=5 versus usual 12

Down= 22.85, about the same but only 65% as fast as the wireless laptop

Up= 4.39, about same as laptop but SEVEN TIMES FASTER

I wonder what it could be.

»stage.results.speedtest. ··· 9212.png

Here's a nutshell of the situation.
»img607.imageshack.us/img ··· hell.jpg
I'm also going to join a different thread here that seems pretty active: [Connectivity] Slower Upload speeds with DOCSIS 3.0 SB6120 Modem
»[Connectivity] Slower Upload speeds with DOCSIS 3.0 SB6120 Modem

The speed difference between safe and normal modes would seem to indicate that you have something consuming a lot of cpu during normal operation. You might want to take a look at the task list in safe and normal modes for differences. Also, your nic drivers seem a little out of date, you may want to look at upgrading them.
Also, try running a "computer check up" at PCPITSTOP. That could help identifying configuration or other problems with this machine.

It's now 4/13 and an hour ago I booted on a Linux "live CD" someone suggested as a test of this being a hardware versus software question. I was skeptical of the test producing results much different than Safe Mode (which fast results to me had indicated a software issue). BUT these Linux results were strange:

Xfinity to Boston: 9.03m down (much slower!) and the Up was still "preparing" when I quit out of it after 10 minutes.

Speedtest.net to Boston: 3.92 down (much much slower) and the Up I quit out of after it hovered around .20 for ten minutes.

So I went over to the wireless laptop running Win7 Home and did both tests.

Xfinity to Boston: 12.58m down, 4.53 up

Speedtest.net to Boston: 16.91 down, 4.58 up

The wireless downs were way down from the last test, but the ups were as fast.

Does this tell us anything?

I regularly check the Task Manager and keep my running processes pretty damn clean. Right now for instance as usual System Idle is running at 97% CPU. I guess you mean my RealTek ethernet driver. I downloaded the latest they offer but am reluctant. As for Pitstop I could only find a $30 optimizer.

I've used many versions of the Realtek NIC driver package with no issues. If it makes things worse, you can easily roll it back to the prior version.

Good to know, thanks. As for rolling back the driver, though, I'm an old noob, all I know to do is a whole big system/image restore. How would I go about rolling back *just* the ethernet driver?

Go to Device Manager, double click on the Realtek NIC, click the Driver tab. There should be a button there to roll it back.

OK, I updated my NIC driver. I had 7.49.927.2011 First I tried the supplied Search the net method, and my Win7 reported that I already had the latest! No. So then I pointed the updater at the Win7 inside the folder I'd downloaded directly from Realtek a couple of days ago, unzipped and renamed a little to Realtek Ethernet Driver_Win7_7069_03212013. It took, and did a driver update to version 7.69.304.2013 - a different, lower (?) version than your 8.12.304.2013

I popped realtek 8.12.304.2013 into Google and it showed a lot of results, but before doing anything I went to Speedtest.net with this new driver and still got lousy results - 22.59 and 0.54. The Google results weren't exactly clear so I thought I'd reply with the above and this composite grab, and ask you where to go get the 8.12.304.2013 version, and the Reply page wouldn't load! Dead. Tried Google News and my weather. Both dead. Rolled back my driver. All still dead. Strange that going to Google and Speedtest worked with the new driver but then everything fails. This is exactly why I was reluctant to fiddle with the driver. Electrons! Maybe a PC restart will help. YES, it's fixed, and still back at the old driver.

So can you point me to a good source for the 8.12.304.2013 ?

Mine's a different number because I'm running Windows 8. You have the latest driver for 7 now (they both have the same build date).