SB4100, Comcast Gold Service, and Linksys BEFSR11 router

All...I thought I would share a few things...

1) I upgraded to Comcast Gold - but I was not getting the download speeds of 6000...more like 3000 to 4000. The uploads were avg 730 up. It was suggested that a tech come out to measure signal strength. So I scheduled a tech to come out to check my signals...in the meanwhile...I was out of town all last week. When I came back - my speeds were around 5000 on avg. The tech came out this morning and said they had been working on the nodes last week and that may explain my speed increase.

2) Originally - when I had HSI setup - they installed an amplifier in my house. The tech noticed it and said that since Comcast has done all the field upgrades - the amp is no longer needed for HSI, and may actually hurt service. He said it's ok for TV - but not needed for HSI. He bypassed the amp for the cable modem service - and yes - speeds jumped up to 5500 on average.

3) He was ok with me having a router - but to be clean we bypassed the router and went PC to Cable Modem for all the work and testing. When we put the Linksys BEFSR11 ver 1.1 (firmware 1.46.02, Aug 03 2004) router back into the mix, the speeds seem to slow down a bit - and there is clear latency issue - where it is now taking longer to load and refresh pages. Now I am avg 5400 - with a clear delay in loading and refreshing pages compared to not having the router in the mix.

Has anyone else seen a diff between with router and without router?

Reply to
riggor9999
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Well...I run a Netgear router in my config on Gold tier, and speeds are never faster when I connect the modem directly to the computer; so I don't think that a router necessarily causes latency or slower download speeds. In my view the inability to achieve the 6mb advertised download speed is (at least in my case) a Comcast problem...especially because my pings to comcast.net vary tremendously...sometimes averaging 35 ms and other times

150-250 ms.
Reply to
Richardson

based on the original poster's description it seems pretty clear to me that it is not a comcast problem. Why? Because when he had the cable modem connected directly to his computer his speeds were around "5500".

Reply to
Giles Harney

Yes, but he asked whether anyone was seeing differences in speed with and without the router in the mix. My post indicates that a router is not necessarily any kind of limiting factor for download speed (although it might be in his case).

Reply to
Richardson

Speed has to depend on what server you are using, packet size, and more. When you talk about performance metrics, ID the way the metric is done. c.f.

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talks about speed optimization behind a router.

Reply to
Rick Merrill

It has been a while since I bypassed my router and connected direct through my modem; and it is an ADSL modem. However, some router firmware has been known to be a drag on HSI. I don't know if that applies to the combination of router and firmware you have. You should probably check with the Linksys forum on BroadBandReports:

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Reply to
NormanM

"riggor9999" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:

We've seen some issue in the DSL world among various router manufacturers. You might want to checkout the forums on

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I have seen posts regarding certain Linksys units which were not able to handle speeds over 5Mbps on the WAN side, even though they are "spec'd" at 10. Another thing to check is the MTU. I believe 1500 should be the default for cable. Perhaps you could borrow a different router and test the theory...?

jpac

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Reply to
Packrat®

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