Comcast XFINITY → throttling internet

Well, you know I don't come here unless I have trouble. Well the problem has been going on a while. But recently I have more problems to add. I'm in the Houston area. So I'm about up to here (pointing to my neck) and I'm 5.11 .

I think I use my internet within reason not going over the cap or anything but I do torrent. And every time I run torrent, my modem would mysteriously reboots several times a day. And It does not happen when I don't torrent. Now I keep on reading that comcast doesn't do such things but the proof is right there. I mean I don't get disconnected when I'm on VPN or any other traffic such as watching an amazon prime video but when I run torrent my connection go all batshit on me.

Recently, even my youtube videos are slow as crap and buffering. This just happened recently and my speedtest indicates that the speed is fine about 15-18mbs. So I have no idea why the youtubes are slow as hell now. It doesn't matter what youtube I'm watching, on the computer or on my googleTV it would be slow and buffering.

Last I keep on getting calls from comcast people for me to upgrade my internet. I keep thinking it's some kind of scam because they don't seem to have all my information when I ask them, but why would they say they are from comcast and apparently they do have some of my information. Which they are either comcast doing some really low business acts or someone has stolen customer data from comcast and posing as comcast. I also have phone numbers that when i queried google it says it's a comcast number. The number is 866-375-9723. I've gotten calls many times from comcast, maybe not all from that number and there's an actual rep on the other side. I asked to be removed from the list but still get calls from someone claiming to be comcast.

Another thing, I have the cable distribution box in my backyard and aparently some comcast tech must have been back there connecting my neighbor's cable connection or something, but they have left the cable unburied in my backyard for a month now. Who the hell does sloppy jobs like that?

A question - are you serviced by Comcast ?

If so, I need to move this thread to the proper forum.

Please do, but always thought they were the same since I had timewarner and it was changed to comcast.

Totally different companies. Moving thread to Comcast....

Cheers.

Comcast does not throttle first of all. Your connection probably has issues while running torrents because your connection isn't THAT fast and is causing a lot of slow downs because you're maxing out the connection, especially if you're allowing others to download from YOU.

Secondly, YouTube is known to have issues. Their servers simply cannot handle all the traffic they get during peak times and be able to stream videos without buffering.

All that being said, what are your signal levels ?

this is what i know from my experinces with cable services..

torrnents connect a number of people to your system (50-1000) to pull what you have and you pull from what others have.. that traffic may all use the same port so think of it like this..

a two lane highway and when comcast gives you say 20mb service you maybe downloading at 2 mb but uploading 120kbs so the packets go and alternate. doing soo very quickly creating load when you hit say 10% load your hardware crys for a buffer so it can smooth the download and upload ( traffic on said highway) so when it does this it may disconnect you and reconnects to the system..

the new peer host in most torrent have timers to update your connections and kill off bad or slow connections preventing the disconnections but its not perfect..dht local is what many use as well for the same thing as a tracker..

as for youtube it may be your buffer size as i been blaming lag and stuff for my slow loading videos but truth was if you start watching youtube or other streaming sites right click on it and a menu with come up from adobe flash and adjust size to unlimited and download the latest flash.. if you do that the site may be over loaded .. if you have to pause it till the stream is almost done ( slower connections this helps)..

Seriously? Are you saying that Comcast is "throttling" you by rebooting your modem?

You've got a technical problem going on there. If the modem is spontaneously rebooting under heavy bi-directional traffic (torrents), then the problem is most likely with the modem itself.

I am also experiencing very slow buffering with YouTube. No other streaming services I try have this problem and I get normal speed test results. I have tried different DNS servers in different locations to force the YouTube CDN to give me different endpoints, and the result is always the same. Going through a VPN, I get my usual speed from YouTube. This indicates to me that they are throttling YouTube traffic.

I often see very slow buffering on YouTube. But I have a feeling it's YouTube trying to be smart about not allowing video to buffer too far ahead of the client. Makes some sense, but can cause issues. I also see some videos that no matter what you do, they inexplicably buffer much more poorly than all the others, causing pauses. My guess is that this is caused by a connection (for that video only) to a particularly slow server.

The problem here is that it's so slow it can't keep up at all. I can't watch videos in 720p because the buffering isn't keeping up with the video bitrate. It was not like this in the past, and it's not a problem with my connection because other streaming sites will stream HD just fine. I have tried many different videos and they all have the same problem, even Gangnam Style can't keep up with 720p. I've eliminated it being an issue with the specific CDN endpoint by changing my DNS servers to ones in different locations, and using a VPN I have no problems. Something is very fishy here.

Also, to the OP, I used to get similar unsolicited calls from Comcast pretty frequently. It seems to just be a thing that they do. I stopped answering their calls and eventually they stopped calling me.

I've been having the same issues with youtube. Only youtube and nothing else as far as I can tell as well. Haven't tried a VPN yet but I'm starting to see this issue pop up on there forums I've been checking for information as well. not sure what's going on but it's both sketchy and irritating.

I've been having this also. YouTube is not working correctly. I know they are doing something because it was fine 2 to 3 weeks ago. Now it's buffering like crazy and if at the same moment I take out my Andriod phone which is on sprint plays within 10 to 15 seconds. I usually get 5 mbps with Sprint LTE in my area. Sprints LTE is as slow as everyones 3g. I can do speedtest.net on my computer and at that very moment get 22mbps down and 3.5 up. With that I should be able to do 1080p but its even buffering on the lowest setting which is something like 360 something. They are for sure doing something. Isn't there a throttle test we can do.