Comcast & The FCC

[ChorniyVolk]

Comcast was, is, and will probably continue to be sh*t, no surprise there.

Anyway, even without monthly limits, there's still a speed bandwidth limit, and in the US there are very few plans with extremely high bandwidth, not like Japan or anything.

neukgraag, when you say no limits, you mean no "XGB per month" limits right? I mean, you still have a certain speed at which you download stuff and can't go above that speed, right?

[neukgraag]

Originally Posted by ChorniyVolk

neukgraag, when you say no limits, you mean no "XGB per month" limits right? I mean, you still have a certain speed at which you download stuff and can't go above that speed, right?

Current Comcast High-Speed Internet subscribers will see an increase in their current internet speeds with the launch of DOCSIS 3.0. of up to 16 Mbps download/2 Mbps upload. However, in reality, of course, it is limited by the host server and the path to my house and FTV is comparable to other sites in that respect. Only Kink.com has considerably faster transfer rates. Now, that speed would be throttled by Comcast if I exceed my usage limits for the month. With all the downloading of videos I do - I am on several sites - I do not come close to that limit.
By the way, with the launch of DOCSIS 3.0, Comcast will also be offering two new levels of speed service:

Ultra 22 Mbps download/5 Mbps upload (up to 30 Mbps/7 Mbps with PowerBoost)
Extreme 50 50 Mbps download/10 Mbps upload

Imagine that.

[ChorniyVolk]

They can decent speeds, but even if they don't charge an insane price, I still wouldn't go with them because of some of their other policies and such.

[neukgraag]

And this from CNET:

The Federal Communications Commission is moving forward with its National Broadband Plan despite an appeals court decision earlier this week that called into question the agency's authority over regulating the Internet.

In its 2010 Broadband Action Agenda released Thursday, the FCC said it plans to address more than 60 rules in the making and other proposals by the end of the year. The FCC said it was important to move forward with these items to reach its goals of helping 100 million U.S. homes get affordable access to broadband with download speeds of 100 Mbps over the next decade; promoting innovation, investment and competition and consumer interest in broadband; and providing a platform to improve energy consumption and monitoring, education, and health care.

[FTVfanatic]

Originally Posted by neukgraag

However, in reality, of course, it is limited by the host server and the path to my house and FTV is comparable to other sites in that respect. Only Kink.com has considerably faster transfer rates.

...Ultra 22 Mbps download/5 Mbps upload (up to 30 Mbps/7 Mbps with PowerBoost)
Extreme 50 50 Mbps download/10 Mbps upload

Imagine that.

That's correct. Nowadays your download speed seem to be effected by the limits on the servers. There are both bandwidth caps and throttling going on nearly everywhere. Getting a faster connection doesn't necessarily make things faster in real life. However, there are other sites to the one you mention with 'decent' bandwidth. 'Website 1' has allowed download speeds of up to 1.5 Mbytes/s or 12 Mbits/s, but averaged at half that speed. That content was in .mp4 (BTW the format of content seems to have an effect on download speed on a same server...). On 'Website 2' the .mpg files downloaded at only 500 kbytes/s or 3.9 Mbits/s. However, the zip files peaked at 2.5 Mbytes/s. Yes, that's 20 Mbits/s real world speed!

Those Ultra and Extreme connections seem interesting. However, the upload looks kind of restrected to me. Luckily, I'm fortunate to have equal speed in both uploading and downloading. How fast is my connection? Well, fast enough: 24 Mbps download/24 Mbps upload

There is a good broadband speed test on the internet that is easy and free to do. It gives good measures of one's real connection speed. I won't link it here, but finding the site is easy.