Comcast question
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 - 10:19am
Other night i was having some bad pings in TF2 and was getting frustrated. I went to the device manager to make sure my drivers for my NIC were updated and i noticed that Comcast had created 2 devices that started with ITSATAP. Any ideas what these are?
All i see is Its-a-tap and wonder WTF?
Gamer Tag: Rantyr
Have you set up any kind of VPN networking on your system before? A TAP device is a virtual interface used for establishing VPN links, perhaps that might be the "TAP" part of that (ITSATAP would be the coolest name for a TAP driver ever).
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Xbox Live: Legion SB | PSN: Legion_SB
"Damn, your comedic timing is awesome." -- Spaz, *Legion* Fan #1437
Well, the Internet has this to say
And this:
Why do you have any Comcast specific device drivers anyway? Are you connected to the modem via USB?
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Web: Mantis on the Mountain
--
My wife liked the man part monster I made. -Pharacon
Comcast chokes your bandwidth if you go over their undefined "limit." A good way to tell if you have is to see if you are doing any of the following:
Using a third party VOIP client
Using BitTorrent
Downloading a video file
Playing a game
Streaming a movie
Comcast, as well as other ISPs, define this as "behavior indicative of illegal activity."
Well F*ck them. I deleted them and will see if they get reinstalled over the weekend.
All i do is game. I did use bit torrent for downloading the the AoC PvP weekend client.
I thought they went to court over throttling customers and lost?
Gamer Tag: Rantyr
I haven't seen any follow up to the myriad of suits that Comcast has found itself in within the past year. If you have an alternative to Comcast, I would think that the f*ck you consumer attitude is enough indication to switch ASAP.
I've had no problems with comcast in over 4 years.
In fact, they've boosted my bandwidth several times with no increase in price.
Started at ~230Kbps average sustained (big jump from crappy DSL @ 80Kbps)
then 6 months later ~275
then a year after that~325
now in the last year ~370Kbps
some big name sites (microsoft, ign, funcom, turbine, etc) I get 750-800kbps sustained (powerboost?)
Being fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster.
And what is your service advertised as? I bet a lot more than 370KBps.
Wow, it should be more even in their fine print they state that I should get 4Mbps(500KBps) to 12Mbps(1.5MBps) for their basic service. I wonder if there is a bottle neck in the apartment complex I'm in.
Still, I'm very happy with 370KBps. I have no problems downloading multiple gigs in a few hours. The AoC 13gb client took ~3h50m.
Being fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster.
On my 10Mb connection through Charter.net, I regularly download at more than 1000Kbytes/sec. I don't think you're getting what you're paying for.
You don't with cable connections. They advertise 10 meg service and since it's shared with all your neighbors you will rarely get that, or close to it. Comcast is one of the worst ones for overloading their sharing with too many connections. I imagine some areas are better than others. I've been through the Comcast pain before myself. I buy DSL wherever I live now, I pay for 6mb and I get right about that.
Comcast's speedboost works well for me, although I don't doubt that y'all are right when you say I just got lucky and new customers can't rely on this kind of speed.
Just did a speedtest from http://speakeasy.net/speedtest/
28673 kbps down (28mbps)
2474 kbps up (2.4mbps)
I don't like Comcast as a corporate citizen, but I honestly can't complain about the size of their pipe. Any time I check my bandwidth I score over 25 mbps, and that makes me smile.
We all know that there is no quicker way to empty a joke of its peculiar magic than to try to explain it -- to point out, for example, that Lou Costello is mistaking the proper name "Who" for the interrogative pronoun "who," etc. - D.F.Wallace
The thing is look at DSL pricing.
$49.95 a month for 1.5mb down 384kb up (speakeasy.net)
Comcast = $49.95 a month for 4-12mb (ends up being 2.9mb for me with certain big sites getting 6.4mb)
How much are you paying for your 6mb DSL Leaping?
Being fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster.
42.95 through Bellsouth.
The really nice thing about Speakeasy is that their ToS is very liberal: it's basically, "don't do illegal stuff or spam with our network". And they'll help you split your bill with a neighbor; you can legally share your connection. The total cost is higher, but per-person it's lower than a dedicated one. And they have very low latency; they're just ideal for gaming.
No, you don't get the pure speed that you can get off cablemodem, but you get every byte you pay for. If Speakeasy had any physical way of delivering higher bandwidth, I'm sure they'd do it.
I'll echo that. I haven't been a Speakeasy customer, but I've got two friends who both got amazing customer service from them. One had lost her connection after a messy breakup with her long-time partner and Speakeasy allowed her to keep her speakeasy email account even though she was no longer a customer.
You just won't get that from a big company. +5 for Speakeasy.
We all know that there is no quicker way to empty a joke of its peculiar magic than to try to explain it -- to point out, for example, that Lou Costello is mistaking the proper name "Who" for the interrogative pronoun "who," etc. - D.F.Wallace
Hmmm... So I tested my bandwidth on Speakeasy and got these results:
max (25.5mb down) (1.5mb up)
minimum (9.1mb down) (1.1mb up)
I find it odd the real discrepancy between tested results and real world experience.
Are you guys saying that with DSL there is much less of a difference between tested results and real world experience?
Being fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster.
In the part of the county i live in i'm stuck with Comcast.
I used to live on the other side and had Charter, but they couldn't keep their lines up to save their lives. So i was initially happy i had Comcast when i moved.
Verizon FiOS is slowly creeping my way so i'll probably go that route once it's here. Probably next year though as slow as they're moving.
Gamer Tag: Rantyr
I love Cox.
Wait......
*Legion* wrote:
Well part of it is how cable and dsl work. With cable as some people have already said you share the pipe with everyone on your local node until your traffice hits the back bone back at the cable office. This local node could be a few square miles big or just a couple of culdesacs depending on how built-out your cable company is. Hence, if you do speed tests during peak hours (say between 5-9pm during the week and a few times during each day of weekend) you'll probably see slower speeds than during non-peak times (11am on a monday say).
DSL doesn't have the node limitation, it's limitation is quality of signal over length of wire. For the most part, phonelines are fiber until they get to a box in your neighborhood and then from that box to your house you get a dedicated copper wire, basically you aren't sharing the total available bandwidth of the connection box with everyone who may be connected to it (like you do with cable) but the cable in the ground doesn't always take the shortest route to your house or the phone box/switching gear so you may not even be able to get a higherspeed DSL connection.
So, long story short, yes DSL is going to be closer to the mark when it comes to getting the speed you are paying for.
Another thing to keep in mind is that cable and dsl companies can just as easily shape traffic so that the speed testing sites work fine no matter what the time of day so you can get a 'decent' test score but not see that same performance on other sites. A good thing to try to augment the scores is if you have some webspace available or a friend that does, host a 10mb and 50mb file on there to see how long those take.
Do you ever walk alone like a drifter in the dark?
In general, you'll get less bandwidth from DSL, but if you buy from a good company, like Speakeasy, you'll get higher quality. That is, ping times will be lower, packet loss will be nearly nonexistent, and in the case of Speakeasy, you can use your bandwidth any damn way you want, as long as it's legal and not spam. You can host servers, run bittorrent 24/7, whatever. You won't get any hate mail from Speakeasy for daring to use your connection. Their ToS is very liberal. And no packet-shaping, either. You get what you pay for.
You also can easily host a mail server on Speakeasy IPs, because Speakeasy is super-aggressive about shutting down spammers, so the blacklists don't block their IP space.
And, as Oso says, their tech help is awesome. I had to call them twice in the three years I had their service, and in both cases, the tech was really sharp, on the ball, and had me operational very quickly. It was a genuine pleasure talking with them.
Charter has finally turned into a pretty good ISP, but I still miss Speakeasy. If I could get them here, I'd switch back in a heartbeat.
Charter around here sucks balls in service and support.
Gamer Tag: Rantyr
Check out dslreports.com and look at the ISPs in your area that are good. Hell, for all you know you have Fios coming from Verizon.
And as far as the folks using online speedtests to measure their speeds. That doesn't apply to large packet transfers, which is where Comcast has been throttling your connection. Ever notice how when you download a video or game that your speed can go from 300 M down to 100 Kb in a few minutes? You very may well get 22 Mb/s, but that is for the first few kilobytes. Web pages and small files download lightning fast, then not so much.
If anyone has a good link to a speed test measuring speed with high volume packets, I would love to see it. Because the ISPs have gotten savvy to those and will give you fast speeds for the first few kilobytes.
It's on the outskirts now working its way into the county. Probably a year away. I'm definitely switching when it gets to my neighborhood.
Gamer Tag: Rantyr