So far, mine sucks. This thread is NOT about the terrible customer service. I am interested in the following:
- Up-time - do you have problems with your Internet service being disrupted?
- Throughput - does Comcast/Xfinity consistently deliver the bandwidth you pay for?
I've been with Comcast for less than two months. So far, I've had complete disruptions in service at least five times. I've tried two brand-new modems (different manufacturers).
I have two HDHomeRun PRIME tuners and a modem. There is only one cable jack in my apartment (same as in my previous apartment, on Brighthouse), so all three devices are connected to a single jack. I have tried several combinations of splitters and taps. With every combination of splitter and taps, the downstream signal has been between -4 to +3dB, and the upstream signal has been around 45dB... both of which are well within spec.
I tried a balanced 3-way splitter with a -5.5dB drop on each output. I tried an unbalanced splitter with -3.5dB to the modem, and -7dB to the tuners. I tried a "tap" that is supposed to split the frequencies needed by the modem... to the modem, plus a 2-way splitter with -3.5dB to each tuner.
In each case... the tuners worked perfectly. The modems (I tried two, brand-new modems... two different brands... two different models) would work perfectly for a day or two. The signals on the modem's internal webpage looked perfect. But, after a day or two... the connection would be dropped. The only way to get it working again... was to disconnect the modem and connect it again.
After messing with this for several weeks... trying every combination of splitters, cables, etc... I finally decided to connect the modem directly to the wall jack.
It stayed connected, consistently, for more than a week.
Even though the signals (when connected, and working) with the splitters always looked perfect... I decided to buy a unity-gain bi-directional amplifier with an active return.
Ever since then, my modem has remained connected... without needing to be power-cycled.
Now, just to remind you... the tuners have never had a problem throughout this whole ordeal. They have ALWAYS been able to tune a channel.
But... what I have noticed is that I frequently have a substantially slower throughput than what I pay for.
When I was on Brighthouse, my subscription included 60Mbps download, and 6Mbps upload. I always got exactly that, even during peak periods, such as evenings and weekends.
Since being on Comcast, I have noticed substantial slow-downs. Even browsing simple websites can be slow. So, today... I measured it.
My subscription is for 90Mbps download, and 6Mbps upload. During peak times today, using Comcast's "on-network" tool, speedtest.xfinity.com (which proves that it is being limited by Comcast's network, and not some "external" network load), I would get a short burst of download speed near 90Mbps... but it would quickly slow down to around 6Mbps. The test took so long that I didn't wait for the upload test.
That's less than 7% of what I pay for!
What's your experience with Comcast's Internet service? Do you get the bandwidth that you pay for?