Not to be a conspiracy theorists but it seems Comcast sometimes sells the high speed bit to assuage people from the other not-so-nice things they do from time to time. Here is a recent report (now with an update that it's no longer happening) about DNS interception by Comcast. http://comcastisfuckingwithyourport53traffic.wordpress.com/ Also there are ways for Comcast to very easily uncap traffic to the bandwidth speed test sites to make it look better than it really is (not saying they are doing this, I don't use Comcast). Similar to another that had posted is a better means to test real bandwidth would be to transfer several large files at the same time and combine the transfer rate of all to get your best reading on actual throughput performance with the expectation that the remote side(s) is/are not under load during your test. There are tons (probably not as many tons as a few years ago) of DSL ISPs in the area that can handle Qwest DSL lines. This is not in Fridley but Richfield (and possibly St Louis Park soon after) are going to be going thru some fiber to the home (FTTH) pilots in the near future. Get the triple play service over fiber directly to your home, could be pretty awesome. _____ From: tclug-list-bounces at mn-linux.org [mailto:tclug-list-bounces at mn-linux.org] On Behalf Of kristopher browne Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 1:46 PM To: TC Linux User Group Subject: Re: [tclug-list] Internet Options in Fridley, MN? I'm in NE Mpls, not too far from Fridley. I just did a Speakeasy test from my house on a whim, without any special prep (Which means I still have torrents going in the background and my wife is downloading things) and I hit 15341 down and 7334 up. We have the basic home service here, I consider that pretty successful. I don't like Comcast's pricing or business practices sometimes, but it's hard to disagree with their speed. Kristopher Browne kris.browne at gmail.com kris.browne at me.com 612-353-6969 - Home 612-408-4431 - Cell http://www.google.com/profiles/kris.browne On Jun 10, 2009, at 1:24 PM, Chris Barber wrote: I just did a bandwidth test using http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/. My download speed is 28,998kbps and upload is 6,864kbps from the Chicago server. 23,694kbps down and 4,087kbps up to the Seattle server. These numbers aren't 100% accurate since I am uploading some backups while performing the tests. I was originally a Time Warner Cable business class customer and I paid $120 per month. I called Comcast a little over a year ago and was going to cancel my business class since I didn't need the static IPs anymore, but they said I was on the old TWC rates. I just needed to sign a 1 year contract (which is a no brainer... I **NEED** internet access) and now I pay $70/mo and get 5 static IPs. Since it's business class service, should anything go wrong, they can send out a guy within 24 hours... usually much, much, much sooner than that. I'm very happy with Comcast and highly recommend the business class service! -Chris Eric P: sorry, emailed the list from the wrong email address and it got bounced... gave me a chance to change some of my original email. Eric F Crist wrote: On Jun 10, 2009, at 12:51 PM, Eric Peterson wrote: On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 12:47 PM, Chris Barber <mailto:stuff at cb1inc.com> <stuff at cb1inc.com> wrote: Or use Comcast Business class and get good speed, static ips, no bandwidth limits and no packet shaping. It's like $70/mo with a 1 year contract. Totally worth it. Chris, What up/down do you get for $70/mo? Last time I checked it out it was $120/mo. and the download rate was way below the standard residential. Glad to hear it's improved. I have 16/2 which I pay $52.00/month for and another $20 for a /28 of static IPs. --- Eric Crist _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota tclug-list at mn-linux.org http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota tclug-list at mn-linux.org http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20090610/aecd6364/attachment-0001.htm