Originally Posted By: friendly_jacek
A cursory google search reveals this:
Quote:
It is important to note that Comcast cheats like crazy on the speedtest reports, regardless of which one you use. They even have a marketing term for their cheat… SpeedBoost. Basically, Comcast will give you excellent bandwidth (in my case, 20Mbps) for the first 10 seconds or so of any download. After that 10 seconds of bliss, however, you are knocked back down to a more modest 6-8Mbps. This makes Comcast look great on speed and bandwidth reports, but has little bearing on what you can get sustained. Sure, this will make web pages load quicker, but won’t help you with any data transfer.
http://www.jimgoings.com/2008/03/fios-vs-comcast-a-real-world-comparison-and-review/
I wouldn't call it cheating. Comcast is pretty open about what SpeedBoost is and how it works, and the advertized speeds in their plans are the sustained speeds, not the SpeedBoost speeds, so if you sign up for the 12 Mbps option, you get about 12 Mbps sustained, and about 20 Mbps temporary, when on SpeedBoost. Works fine for me.
Still, Comcast is really expensive once you're out of the promotional period. Unfortunately, there is no good alternative where I live, if I want similar speeds.
A cursory google search reveals this:
Quote:
It is important to note that Comcast cheats like crazy on the speedtest reports, regardless of which one you use. They even have a marketing term for their cheat… SpeedBoost. Basically, Comcast will give you excellent bandwidth (in my case, 20Mbps) for the first 10 seconds or so of any download. After that 10 seconds of bliss, however, you are knocked back down to a more modest 6-8Mbps. This makes Comcast look great on speed and bandwidth reports, but has little bearing on what you can get sustained. Sure, this will make web pages load quicker, but won’t help you with any data transfer.
http://www.jimgoings.com/2008/03/fios-vs-comcast-a-real-world-comparison-and-review/
I wouldn't call it cheating. Comcast is pretty open about what SpeedBoost is and how it works, and the advertized speeds in their plans are the sustained speeds, not the SpeedBoost speeds, so if you sign up for the 12 Mbps option, you get about 12 Mbps sustained, and about 20 Mbps temporary, when on SpeedBoost. Works fine for me.
Still, Comcast is really expensive once you're out of the promotional period. Unfortunately, there is no good alternative where I live, if I want similar speeds.
