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burgertime6
join:2014-01-23

burgertime6

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[Speed] Does cable broadband really get "shared" with the neighborhood?

I am planning on switching from FiOS soon because they raised their rate out of nowhere with no explanation other than greed. The guy from Verizon told me "Xfinity(comcast) internet isn't even comparable because you are sharing it with the entire neighborhood - you aren't going to get anywhere near the 25mbit they promise".

This makes little sense. is there any truth to his statement?

graysonf
MVM
join:1999-07-16
Fort Lauderdale, FL

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graysonf

MVM

[Speed] Re: Does cable broadband really get "shared" with the neighborhood?

It all has to be shared at some point. I have Comcast Performance Internet service and live in a suburban area. I would say it's moderate density overall, but I am in a condo with 132 units on a 9 acre tract, and there is an even more dense condo just across the street. We are all on the same cable node, along with many other single family homes in the area.

Performance is advertised as 25/5, and I always get that and more.

Do you have neighbors with cable? If so ask them for the local conditions.


djlandkpl
join:2007-12-27
Norton, MA

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djlandkpl to burgertime6

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Comcast raises rates every year too. Some services go up and some down.
Nalez
join:2011-01-14

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Nalez to burgertime6

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Here is something for you to take a look at:
»Adelphia High Speed Internet »FAQ: Quicker primer on cable network's shared bandwidth.

As well as: »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op ··· terminal

In FIOS; customers share an OLT - which has a set amount of bandwidth.

telcodad
MVM
join:2011-09-16
Lincroft, NJ

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telcodad to burgertime6

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said by burgertime6:

I am planning on switching from FiOS soon because they raised their rate out of nowhere with no explanation other than greed. The guy from Verizon told me "Xfinity(comcast) internet isn't even comparable because you are sharing it with the entire neighborhood - you aren't going to get anywhere near the 25mbit they promise".

This makes little sense. is there any truth to his statement?

said by graysonf:

It all has to be shared at some point.

Yes, no ISP offers a direct Home-to-Internet connection, it's just a matter of how much bandwidth is divided among all the subscribers sharing the closest common agregation/mux-demux device, realizing that the total demand at any one time is very dynamic and varies by time-of-day.

The question is then - is the total neighborhood/local-area bandwidth divided by the number of subscribers sharing that much higher for a typical Verizon FiOS system vs. a typical Comcast DOCSIS one, and if so, how about in your particular area?
telcodad

telcodad

MVM

said by graysonf:

It all has to be shared at some point.

said by telcodad:

Yes, no ISP offers a direct Home-to-Internet connection, it's just a matter of how much bandwidth is divided among all the subscribers sharing the closest common agregation/mux-demux device ...

said by Nalez:

In FIOS; customers share an OLT - which has a set amount of bandwidth.

Thanks Nalez See Profile, that's exactly what graysonf See Profile and I were talking about.

Darknessfall
Premium Member
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Re: Does cable broadband really get "shared" with the neighborhood?

It really depends

In my neighborhood, a lot of people use AT&T U-verse over Comcast(there are quite a few who do use Comcast though). There's usually very little congestion and I could hit very high PBs before they removed it from our area(200+ Mbps). On the other hand, someone else I know on the other side of town has major congestion during the afternoon/evening hours.

Caddyroger
Premium Member
join:2001-06-11
To the west

Caddyroger to burgertime6

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Re: [Speed] Does cable broadband really get "shared" with the neighborhood?

I am on the 50/10 plan. I get about 56 down and 11 up at times. I never have seen it drop below 54/10.5.

AnonThurs2
@63.110.228.x

AnonThurs2 to burgertime6

Anon

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You are definitely sharing it, its certainly not a leased direct line back to the headend.
Coax is a broadcast buss, all signals propagate even bad ones.
One thing, besides useage to consider is that interference is always a potential issue. You can have a bad cable here or there(maybe even a neighbor) and it can cause ingress and interference which can drive you up a wall.
I'm sure if you read these forums you'll hear people complain. Part of it is innate due to the fact that the infrastructure is so sensitive, its inductive and can be affected by so many things. I've never had FIOS, but know that fiber is much easier to maintain in general.
And I've also known people who've had oversold nodes in high density apartment areas.
Despite docsis 3, my friend could never get above 8 megs a couple of years ago, after 5 pm.
One last thing is latency. If it truly matters to you, it'll never be as good since the upstream is a Request to send, contention domain. The upstream is much more shared than downstream. It is truly a hack.

AnonMan
@comcast.net

AnonMan

Anon

If you game your ping/latency will go up probably about 7-10ms and even if you don't game it will but gaming is the only thing that will have any impact on that may be noticeable.

Fios is fiber all the way so much lower latency.

Speed wise though you will be fine so long as you have a clean install and the node is clean.

When I switched to Comcrap it took me 3 months of dealing with the area mint sup to get the node cleaned up enough that my connection and everyone else's are stable.

Now my only issue is the entire node going down every other day for work they are doing. Another down fall to cable setup. It can all go down if they are working on an amp or line ahead of you :/
burgertime6
join:2014-01-23

burgertime6

Member

Thank you all for the input. I asked one question and got amazing answers! I have now set up an install for my comcast internet. I'll give it a fair swing. We don't game here, just a family of internet surfers.

Thanks to all of you for this great input!

natser
@comcast.net

natser

Anon

comcast internet is very bad. once everyone is online in afternoon and evening its impossible to use internet. if you have VIOP, comcast is highly NOT recommended. See bellow, we are paying for 50 down and 16 up, and we are getting 3.78down and 3.62 up. Want a huge headache then go with comcast!

After 4 months of fighting for comcast to stabilize internet, the patience ran out. I would never suggest comcast to anyone!

bradyr
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the thing is, comcast *should* have enough bandwidth at the cmts to support all their subscribers in a given area/region. the problem comes in when you legitimately get congested or overloaded nodes.

a lot of times comcast will combine multiple nodes at the cmts (up to 5 or 6 per downstream port), as far as i know each node has its own dedicated upstream port, but the problem can mostly be overloaded dowstream ports.

when people are on a legitimately overloaded node (overloaded at the cmts that is) comcast can decombine the node(s) and suddenly your prime-time/evening shitty speeds vanish and all is good.

It bugs me they dont just have each node on its own port(s) at the cmts but i guess i can understand them wanting to combine based on subscriber counts/ blah blah.

as far as shared medium goes, echoing everyone else, all consumer based internet is shared at some point. Cable = shared from the tap on. DSL = dedicated pair(s) but shared at the dslam/central office. it's just a matter of *where* you're shared, so that becomes the point of congestion.

if you are on comcast and you believe you *are* on a congested node, *tell them* about it, keep raising a stink until someone takes you seriously and gets it to the cmts team or tier 3 support, whatever they call it these days.

gar187er
I DID this for a living
join:2006-06-24
Seattle, WA

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4 months of fighting? how many service calls? modem levels good?

also comcast in one area is not the same as as another. i get my 50 megs down.
Comcast Guy
join:2008-01-16
Harrisburg, PA

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said by burgertime6:

they raised their rate out of nowhere with no explanation other than greed.

People really need to stop saying this.

Net_Sharing
@comcast.net

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Anon

to burgertime6
As others have pointed out, every residential or small business Internet connection is shared at some point in the ISP's network. Cable HFC connections are indeed shared at the neighborhood level, while telco connections are shared at another common point (such as the local Central Office).

Shown below are graphic examples of my own Comcast and AT&T connections that illustrate the difference in latency (at least for my connections) between sharing in the neighborhood for the Comcast connection and sharing at the CO for the AT&T connection. The increased latency during "prime-time" is quite noticeable in both graphs, but is much greater for the AT&T connection.


Comcast Line Monitor



AT&T Line Monitor

Wayne99021
Premium Member
join:2004-12-28
Mead, WA

Wayne99021 to gar187er

Premium Member

to gar187er
I agree with you about the area you live in being a factor.
As per a Comcast line tech a couple years ago, I only have 31 people on my node and am getting around 55megs down and 11 up all the time, peak or not.
No one has moved in or built in the last two years so I assume it's still about 31 people.
JohnShade
join:2009-03-07
Pearland, TX

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That's because people don't realize that everything they see on the cable is bought under contract and what "retransmisson fee" means.
TheBigCheese
join:2002-08-05
Philadelphia, PA

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My personal experience is that the sharing doesn't matter. I live in a high rise in Center City Philly and I almost always get the maximum download speed (28Mbps) I pay for. Even Netflix comes in in HD with extremely rare interruptions. Youtube is another story.

I have a friend with FIOS in the suburbs and Netflix is almost unwatchable even though his speedtest shows better speeds than me. The bottleneck is where Verizon's network meets the Internet and Verizon (and Comcast for that matter) has no incentive to fix the problem since they want to sell much the same content as Netflix.

Your mileage may vary.

telcodad
MVM
join:2011-09-16
Lincroft, NJ

telcodad to burgertime6

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It's my experience also that I always see the basically the same download speed (~54 Mbps) of my Blast! tier, even during the "prime-time" evening hours.

It may be due to the fact that FiOS became available in my area several years ago and many of my neighbors have switched to that, reducing the number of subscribers sharing my node and reducing the contention for bandwidth (Does Comcast ever un-split nodes in these cases?).

And as stated before, YMMV.