Do older routers have speed limitations? not work with powerboost?

I'm thinking the WAN port is 10base-T, which would pretty much explain the throttling of your internet connection...

Those old routers had 10 Mbps WAN ports. They worked fine when the best you could EVER get from cable was 12 Mbps, and most of us were lucky to get 5...

That is exactly it ... I did not think to check - ugh ...

WAN: 10Mbps (10BaseT Ethernet)

LAN: 10Mbps (10BaseT Ethernet) or 100Mbps (100BaseTX Fast Ethernet)

That is exactly it ... I did not think to check - ugh ...

WAN: 10Mbps (10BaseT Ethernet)

LAN: 10Mbps (10BaseT Ethernet) or 100Mbps (100BaseTX Fast Ethernet)

That wouldn't limit you to 6 Mb, though. I'm gonna guess that that problem is about Powerboost needing DOCSIS 1.1+.

It was fine with the same cable modem and the motorola vt2442 router. I am guessing that since the wan interface is only 10mb ... powerboost senses the limitation and stops "boosting" so it falls back to the standard 6mb.

Ethernet uses 8b/10b coding, so even *before* you strip out packet headers and other cruft, the maximum payload throughput - on a good day going down hill with a supersonic tail wind is 8Mbit/second...

Hmm. My old 10 Mb NIC would do right around 10 Mb on LAN transfers (according to an FTP program).

Bypass the (BEFSR41) router (direct to the computer) and I get 22 mbps. Via the router I get 5 mbps.

And if you bypass the router and go direct -- you get both 22 mbps and a different IP address.

Time for a new router then! You can always rent one from 'them'. You know it will work!

Actually, with overhead, it might limit you to 8Mbps. My guess is that particular modem, they simply limit to 6 Mbps as a configuration choice rather than telling it to "open up".

The software must have been reporting incorrectly then. There is transport overhead [i.e. ethernet frames] and there is TCP/IP protocol overhead, both of which affect an FTP transfer. The previous poster is correct ... 8Mbps on a good day [which is about 1.0 MB/s].

Except you'll pay 5x or more over its lifetime than buying one yourself.

The BEFSR41 routers are typically $55 or so. If you do choose to buy one, make sure it's at least a hardware version 4.3; the earlier versions don't have a 100 Mbps WAN port.

FWIW, my setup is:

|| Motorola Surfboard SB5101 || SonicWall TZ-170 Hardware Firewall || Linksys BEFSR41 Version 4.3 || LAN switches

Comcast rolled-out DOCSIS 3.0 here on March 3; I ran the speedtest, results here:

An article describing the DOCSIS 3.0 rollout is here:

So that's 24/6 Mbps compared to my 6/.5 - how much do you have to pay for that or is it some sort of a beta deal you have going to get it at the normal rate ?

I have no idea. Those results are what I experienced when running the test after reading the article in the SF Chronicle on March 3. It's not clear whether everyone gets the new speed automatically or not -- there's been no info from Comcast in this regards.

I've only had Comcast service since July 2008 when I lost my Sprint Broadband 6 Mbps due to the FCC reallocating frequencies last year; you can see the microwave antenna I had to use for Sprint here (and which Sprint apparently abandoned since they never asked to return it, the modem or power supply (after 10 years' service)):

Though I'm in the heart of Silicon Valley, neither cable nor DSL were available here until 3 years ago, and I'm apparently one of the first to have Comcast in this neighborhood (and only for Internet).

In order to run the test, you'd have to have the service. So you got those numbers on your current line ? What do you pay for it ?

From the link you gave - they say all plans are being upgraded:

"*Performance - 12 mbps down/ 2 mbps up for $58.95/month standalone and $42.95/month when bundled with another service."

That would be close to my service cost and 2x down and 4x up from what I have now.

Let's hope TWC does the same sort of speed upgrades for here.

Correct.

It was a special deal from ComcastOffers.com last year; first 6 months were $19.95/month, free modem, and $225 in rebates. Present billing is $42.95/month for what I thought was 6 Mbps inbound, unspecified outbound, with SpeedBurst (12 Mbps for the first 30-50 MB or so).

The deals from ComcastOffers.com vary each month. The deal I got was much better than some neighbors received several months later.

Heh! :-) Do be aware the local DOCSIS 3.0 rollout was the cause of several service outages in the wee hours of the morning several times over the previous month as they presumably upgraded equipment. Weird, since Comcast has only been in this area for 3 years after they ran fiber (which I'd see every morning for several months when driving to work). Given DOCSIS 3.0 has been around for awhile (at least its specs), I'm surprised Comcast didn't install such gear when they first entered this neighborhood.

........... skipped .........

The pricing is still a gamble. In 7 years, I went thru 3 modems from comcast; now on the 4th modem which does voice. Renting is cost effective for me; "it all depends" whether on ever have "problems".