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Comcast Begins Rollout Of 50 Mbps "Extreme" Internet Service

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posted on Oct, 24 2008 @ 02:19 AM
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This sounds great. A little expensive but 10 mbps is wicked.


On Wednesday, Comcast confirmed what I reported earlier: new tiers and new pricing. Comcast's press release indicates that in the next few weeks they will roll out what they call "wideband" to the Boston Metropolitan region and Southern New Hampshire, as well as areas of Philadelphia and New Jersey.

They will also be in the Twin Cities were Comcast rolled out wideband on a trial basis earlier this year.

Wideband is Cisco's name for downstream channel bonded pre-cert DOCSIS 3.0 gear. This is part of Comcast's move to provide DOCSIS 3.0 service nationwide by 2010,

Comcast expects to reach more than 10 major markets and pass nearly 10 million homes and businesses in the next several months.

The new tiers will be as I indicated earlier:

Economy: Unchanged at $24.95 for 768 kbps down/384 kbps up.
Performance: 6/1 Mbps will now get 12/2 Mbps for $42.95 a month.
Performance Plus: 8/2 Mbps will get 16/2 for $52.95 a month.
Ultra: 22/5 Mbps for $62.95 a month. (Will update to 30/5 Mbps.)
Extreme Fifty: 50/10 Mbps for $139.95

However, these new tiers will still be subject to Comcast's previously announced 250 GB monthly cap, and to their new throttling practices. Oh, well, you win some ...

source

I have a question for our techie friends.
Are there actually websites on the net that are capable of downloading at that speed?
That is, 50 mbps sounds great, but will we use that much bandwidth?




[edit on 10/24/2008 by schrodingers dog]



posted on Oct, 24 2008 @ 02:38 AM
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Actual benefit depends on what you're actually doing with the connection. I'd venture to say, for almost all users, it's not worth it. However, if you have the money to spare, and want to know you have the 'ultra-fast', go for it!

Comcast exists to separate their customers from their money. Oh, and also to provide such services as necessary, to that end. At as little cost to them as possible.

I've never seen a Comcast cable modem, even 6Mbps down, that consistently delivers the advertised bandwidth. In fact, the contract with most consumer service agreements essentially state "any advertised bandwidth is just a number we pulled out of our butt, you'll take what you get and pay us anyway".

When browsing websites, it's important to remember that the usual 'page-view' experience is the result of (at least) several dozen different communications transactions, each one separately established, some of them sequenced with one another. When that's the case, even though the entire web site may only be a few hundred KB, at most, latency becomes the primary limiting factor. This is the time it takes for a communications request to be sent over the cable, get to the web site, and the response to be sent back and received by your computer.

Web browsing, over about 1Mbps, is limited by latency, rather than bandwidth. Thus, advertised rates are meaningless.

As to file transfers, yes, those can benefit if the web-site serving the file can push out data fast enough. 50 Mbps = 6250KB/sec, which is faster than (in my experience) you ever get out of a download site. A more reasonable maximum is 1000KB/sec, which is 8Mbps. Above that, and you'll rarely see any benefit.

Now, for peer-to-peer transfers (eg Bittorrent), realize that 1) Comcast detects and is known to 'throttle' such data, resulting in much lower transfer rates, and 2) You're limited by what other peers on the network can serve. So 50Mbps, versus, say, 6 or 10 Mbps isn't much difference.


Let's get fiber to the last mile already! The US Internet infrastructure is fast becoming 3rd-world.



posted on Oct, 24 2008 @ 02:42 AM
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reply to post by Ian McLean
 


The fastest I've ever seen anything download on my mac are things like apple updates and itunes movies/music. And those usually max out at around 2 mbps.
Edit: I have a 6 mbps comcast modem with something called "turbo boost".





[edit on 10/24/2008 by schrodingers dog]



posted on Oct, 24 2008 @ 02:49 AM
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reply to post by schrodingers dog
 


Exactly, and I bet the service you're using was 'advertised' as faster than that.

You're in DC, right? Well, current rates for a T1 line in DC are just under $300 a month. And that's for 1.5 Mbps, bidirectional. That's guaranteed service and bandwidth, contractually.

Gotta ask, why does that service still exist, and in fact is the choice of most businesses, if Comcast is offering such great bargains?



posted on Oct, 24 2008 @ 02:51 AM
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Sorry, but this is a huge crock. I worked for comcast for a short time, and I can say, anything that goes over a certain number usage-wise will get severely restricted immediately. And it lasts for almost a week. Therefore, you may get the speed, but any large files you transfer will result in you getting slight to large restrictions on your access.

I actually run off of 2 separate wireless feeds now because I am a high-end user and I've gotten the restriction many times. Now I had a program built for me that switches between networks at intervals so I don't download from one for too long..

The speed is real, but any use you'd get from that speed will be tampered with. Plus, the actual hardware from comcast (especially in philly) is shared with SO many other accounts, even if they tell you it isn't.

The best bet is to only allow the computer to access information when you're actually on it, but even that didn't work for me all the time.



posted on Oct, 24 2008 @ 02:54 AM
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reply to post by Ian McLean
 


Makes sense.
Though it is my understanding that businesses use and pay for T1 and above for the upload bandwidth.
Though I've never quite understood why in essence, uploads are more expensive than downloads.



posted on Oct, 24 2008 @ 03:09 AM
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reply to post by schrodingers dog
 


It is obviously because data you download, from a common source, can easily be represented by the NSA as a data-identifier checksum, rather than having to be uniquely scanned. Uploaded data, however, must be identified, scanned, archived, and correlated, at greater cost. Thus, it is more expensive to implement, and you either pay more for that, or accept an asymmetrical connection, such as a cable modem.

All makes sense, if you think about it that way.





posted on Oct, 24 2008 @ 04:03 AM
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reply to post by Ian McLean
 


Obviously!


Now can you please tell Dog the real reason upload bandwidth is more "valuable?"
Is the outgoing interweb "tube" thinner?



posted on Oct, 24 2008 @ 09:36 AM
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sadly the providers only quote the top end capabilities of the lines they use, not the performance you will actually get out of it, i remember a few years ago when sprint attempted to launch 10 mbps residential DSL and ultimately collapsed due to poor tech and unreliability.



posted on Oct, 24 2008 @ 03:43 PM
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Does anyone know if one could potentially watch steaming HDTV on 50 mbps?



posted on Oct, 24 2008 @ 04:40 PM
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Originally posted by schrodingers dog
Does anyone know if one could potentially watch steaming HDTV on 50 mbps?


Yes, with regard to bandwidth, you could watch streaming HDTV-quality video on 5 Mbps.

It's more about quality of service (constant throughput of data without dropout or lag), and of course, commercial desirability of providing such a service, than it is about bandwidth.



posted on Oct, 24 2008 @ 07:13 PM
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Originally posted by Ian McLean

Yes, with regard to bandwidth, you could watch streaming HDTV-quality video on 5 Mbps.

It's more about quality of service (constant throughput of data without dropout or lag), and of course, commercial desirability of providing such a service, than it is about bandwidth.


Isn't that where we are heading though?
An endless supply of content, including HD, streaming from the internet directly to one's TV. I thought that was the long term plan?



posted on Oct, 24 2008 @ 07:26 PM
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reply to post by schrodingers dog
 


No, the long term plan is complete micro-monetization of content, and establishing a secure 'pay per use' profit model on top of what is, essentially, a commodity with zero marginal cost. This is, for some reason, taking longer than expected.



posted on Oct, 24 2008 @ 07:39 PM
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What good is the extra speed if they still have the monthly bandwidth caps in place?



posted on Oct, 24 2008 @ 07:48 PM
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A total micro payment internet.
Well non payment TV broadcast still exists.



posted on Oct, 24 2008 @ 07:52 PM
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reply to post by schrodingers dog
 


As regards the difference between upstream/downstream bandwidth, an explanation of sorts can be found here:

www.multichannel.com...

Notice I did not say it would be a satisfactory explanation, just what you're ISP is likely to tell you if asked.



posted on Oct, 24 2008 @ 07:59 PM
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reply to post by Resinveins
 


Thanks for providing that link R,
It's actually a very comprehensive answer to the question.



posted on Oct, 24 2008 @ 08:20 PM
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I have their 16mb package, when I initiate a download it spikes to 26mb and after about 30 seconds drops back to 16mb. I am a heavy newsgroup user and my provider sustains my max transfer of 16mb. I also transfer around 1TB, yes terabyte
a month and have not experienced any slowdown from Comcast. As far as websites go mostly file sharing and sites where you buy music from will sustain max transfer speeds.



posted on Oct, 24 2008 @ 08:37 PM
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Originally posted by Lecter
I have their 16mb package, when I initiate a download it spikes to 26mb and after about 30 seconds drops back to 16mb. I am a heavy newsgroup user and my provider sustains my max transfer of 16mb. I also transfer around 1TB, yes terabyte
a month and have not experienced any slowdown from Comcast. As far as websites go mostly file sharing and sites where you buy music from will sustain max transfer speeds.


Agree with the poster above. Newsgroup downloading I always cap at what the cap is right now 10mbps. However there are times when the 10mbps cap doesn't "kick in" I'm not sure why but I have a friend that was saying his speed was crazy fast one night and as I checked it out I have gotten up to 100mbps when this cap doesn't kick in. Normally this happens about once a week right around 3am I work nights so am on during the middle of the night and at times the cap seems to be dropped for maybe an hour once a week.

My guess is everyone's sleeping so they take an hour once a week to reset or restart something.

I'm refering to megabits per second not megabytes per second. Most people have a belief it's megabytes for some reason even though all the sales reps and fliers say megabits. I guess just a marketing ploy for people who don't realize there is a diffrance. Tried to explain it to a couple family members and they still don'rt get it lol.


MBF

posted on Oct, 24 2008 @ 11:29 PM
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Heck, I only have 21.6k and pay about $24.95/ month and that is all we can get here unless we go to sat. I talked to the repairman and he told me that there were other people that wanted DSL in our area, but the phone company was going to put its resources into improving the service in the urban areas and not improving our service. We are just screwed, that is the cost of living in rural areas.



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