Gigabit plan - Are we allowed to use the bandwidth?

Question

I just upgraded from a 300 mbps plan where I got 350 mbps to a gigabit plan.

At first I got 524 gbps down, 41.7 gbps up. Fair enough, I'm in a Chicago suburb and there are probably a lot of people working from home.

Then I actually tried to use the bandwidth.

I opened up a NNTP client and rate limited myself to 350 mbps and initiated some downloads. At first everything was copasetic, then I noticed my speed dropping to 300 mbps ± 3 mbps. Lowered my bandwidth limiter to 300 mbps and did some more downloads, and noticed my bandwidth going down again, until now I'm hovering around 200 mbps ± 12 mbps (slower than on my 300 mbps plan).

Is it Xfinity policy to rate limit you if you actually try to use the bandwidth? If you're paying for a gigabit plan, shouldn't you actually have the ability to use it?

Right now I'm getting less bandwidth than when I had my 300 mbps plan.

The modem is gigabit capable, and the constraints all appear to be artificial. There's CAT6 to my very expensive router which is a Netgear Orbi RBK853 AX6000 Wifi 6 set - with a router and two satellites. I normally get around 100 MB/sec backing up my Drobo 8D Thunderbolt 3 array connected to my office iMac plugged in to a satellite gigabit LAN port to a Synology 1817+ plugged into a router gigabit LAN port in the family room using the Orbi's dedicated Wifi 6 backhaul radio.

Environment: Technicolor CGM4140COMWireless Gateway, Orbi RBK853 (modem and two satellites), 2020 iMac 5K, Intel 10910 core-i9 10 core 20 thread, AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT 16 GB, 4 TB PCI SSD, 10 gb ethernet, 128 GB RAM.

va2124 · Accepted Answer

Hate to say it, but after resolving my general internet speed problems - I'm now getting about 650 mbps on a connection tuned by the last visiting tech for 300 mbps - I did find a speed limiter underlaying that problem.

When I connect to Giganews from my computer I'm getting throughput numbers with 20 streams being limited to about 10 MB/sec.

I talked to Giganews and found they never do speed limiting, and so as a test I upgraded my account from 20 to 50 connections and found my speed doubled to about 20 MB/sec, which makes sense as the computer is wasting tons of overhead time eastablishing and destroying 50 individual connections.

So ... it appears that a traffic limiter was put into place which esentially limited speed between my computer - LAN actually - to news.giganews.com to about 500 kbps/sec per connection.

Rebooted the gateway and the limiter went away; so I self-imposed a speed limit of 25 mbps on my connection to Giganews and reset the number of connections to 20. The setup with the limiter in place was driving me crazy - though in aggregate I could sustain a decent download rate, any single download would proceed at a snail's pace.

So: it appears that Comcast still does speed limiting, but at least they do it point-to-point; they use a scalpel instead of a broadsword.

I can understand how they don't want the entire excess bandwidth of a neighborhood loop - or strand, I'm not sure of the topology - eaten up by just a few customers, but forthright and open they are not.

I still haven't heard back from level 2 - not that I'd have much to tell them - though I suppose I could request removal of any speed limiters.

It would also be helpful to know what they'd consider a resonable amount of bandwidth use on a point-to-point non-permanent connection to be, though I'm not sure I'd get an answer to that.

bskitz · Answer

Ok first off I didn’t quite understand ALL the terminology you used here but I see what you’re saying:
What’s the point of having a gigabit Plan if XFINITY isn’t gonna let us use all of the bandwidth eg use its FULL potential right?
Got it.

The 1 Constant I’ve noticed with having gigabit Internet is this:
My upload speed is always always always 42.9 Mbps!

If the download was as constant as this 42.9 upload, the New posts in these forums would be cut in half!

va2124 · Answer

@bskitz wrote:Ok first off I didn’t quite understand ALL the terminology you used here but I see what you’re saying:What’s the point of having a gigabit Plan if XFINITY isn’t gonna let us use all of the bandwidth eg use its FULL potential right?Got it.The 1 Constant I’ve noticed with having gigabit Internet is this:My upload speed is always always always 42.9 Mbps!If the download was as constant as this 42.9 upload, the New posts in these forums would be cut in half!Yeah, I didn't even try to use the full bandwidth - I set a rate limiter to the 350 gbps I was getting from my 300 mbps plan when they started throttling me. My supposed new 1000 mbps cap is now throttled down to a little over 200 mbps according to Xfinity's own speed test - around 215 mbps if I recall correctly. This is all very strange to me - sell 1000 mbps and allow you to use a fifth of that speed. I could understand the 524 mbps - that's all the bandwidth there was. But subsequent tests have been 198 mbps, 212 mbps, and now (test I just took) 195 mbps. Why make the offer if they're just going to rate limit you anyway? I guess I'll trying calling customer service, but they'll just tell me I'm provisioned for 1000 mbps (which I can see from https://www.xfinity.com/support/devices/#auth).

va2124 · Answer

Well, I rebooted the gateway again and it looks like the speed cap is off: 597 mbps. That seems like a reasonable compromise speed so I think I'll just leave things as they are.

bskitz · Answer

I guess I spoke too soon didn’t I ?And yes you’re so 1000% correct about dealing with cagey support people!Especially since having spent your career in IT!! It must be very irritating for you to have to listen to those 'is it plugged in?' questions lol 😂I just try and remind Myself that these phone CSRs are people too, and although they may not intially show it, they’re really trying to help and do their job as best they can ya know?XFINTIY and their throttling is unacceptable in my opinion tho. It’s shady. It shouldn’t be allowed of them to do all willy nilly like they do ! I can understand them doing it if a customer has 6TB of data and it’s only day-15 of 30-day billing cycle ya know

va2124 · Answer

@bskitz wrote:Nice! That’s great!! 597 Mbps is very fast —it’s almost 600 Mbps...definitely manageable!Glad it worked out for ya even tho as a compromise ya knoYeah, but then it dropped back down to 194 mbps. So ... I reset the modem to factory (rebooting it) and reconfigured it and I'm up around 600 mbps again. I'll have to wait to see if the speed cap finds my modem again in a little while and give customer service a call if it does. *Sigh* ... I hate having to fight network management teams over stuff like this ... and percolate up from level one 'is it plugged in?' people reading from scripts and assuming you're a nubie who can't quite figure out how to plug in an RJ-45. Before I retired I spent an entire career in Information Technologies and know how frustrating it can be to have to deal with a multi-tier support structure - especially one which is cagey and doesn't want to admit that they're doing rate limiting.

bskitz · Answer

Nice! That’s great!! 597 Mbps is very fast —it’s almost 600 Mbps...definitely manageable!Glad it worked out for ya even tho as a compromise ya kno

va2124 · Answer

@bskitz wrote:I just try and remind Myself that these phone CSRs are people too, and although they may not intially show it, they’re really trying to help and do their job as best they can ya know?XFINTIY and their throttling is unacceptable in my opinion tho. It’s shady. It shouldn’t be allowed of them to do all willy nilly like they do ! I can understand them doing it if a customer has 6TB of data and it’s only day-15 of 30-day billing cycle ya knowYeah, I don't blame them ... but I went back down to 200 mbps again and contacted customer service. I finally convinced them to promote me to level 2 after they fiddled with the gateway and took down my internet for half-an-hour. (I thought my wife - who's working from home - was going to kill me.) After the call, I am up to 300 mbps (actually 309) which is still short of the 350 I had when on the 300 mbps tier. I don't understand why the gigabit plan was in my queue if they don't have the bandwidth to support it - or if they do have the bandwidth why they won't let you use it. It's that kind of marketing that puts support staff between a rock and a hard place - and frustrates users to no end. Do they intend the feature just for hipsters who will brag about having the feature without actually taking advantage of it? Any way, I'm waiting for a call back from level 2 - though I've told them I can't have the internet disconnected until my wife gets off work at 4:30 PM central. It's really worse than cellular plans who sell you unlimited but really have 24 GB caps (after which they lower your speed to non-LTE speeds) - at least there is fine print where you can read about it and know your terms before you buy. Rate limiting you after you buy the gigabit service tier is just fraud.

va2124 · Answer

@RobertWy wrote:I've never had any problem with my Gig service.  Did you check the Gig hardware requirements?Just checked them: requirements for a gigabit are pretty minimal, and system requirments are also minimal. It doesn't take much to saturate a gigabit pipe - an old pentium could probably do it no sweat. It's nice that you're having no problems - but as in any thread discussing a problem, that fact that your setup is working and you're unthrottled doesn't really mean much. We could be running off vastly different network infrastructure, and could have very different customer population densities in our respective areas. Do you actually use that data - I mean download large chunks of data over a long period of time - or did you just get gigabit to improve speed for light or multidevice use? IOW, would there be a reason for them to try to throttle your connection? Currently from my iMac in my office when I initiate a speed test I'm getting 271 gbps down and 32.6 up; from the Xfinity speed test site (from Comcast servers to the gateway) I'm getting 197.1 gbps - and AFAIK that involves none of my local LAN infrastructure - though maybe not. Reexamination of the text of the link on the Xfinity test page says 'Test speed to this computer', so maybe it's testing the speed from the Comcast server all the way back to this computer instead of to the gateway? I'm not sure how they could initiate a speed test connecting from the Comcast server to the Mac, but maybe the website is sending an applet to the iMac and having it run a local speed test out to the Comcast server? You'd think that a Comcast website initiated speed test would be a test to the gateway to eliminate the effect of the user's local LAN infrastructure, but maybe Xfinity is assuming you don't know how to run speed test software on your computer and is just doing it for you (in which case the wording should be 'Test speed from your computer'? Sometimes when I reboot the modem I get about 600 mbps for a while, then it drops down to lower speeds - like a limiter was reaquiring my gateway's MAC address and applying traffic flow parameters to it. Last night I downloaded the 1080p Arrow series (about 300 files on sale for $50 at the iTunes store for a total of about 334.96 GB) and was getting about 200-232 mbps (25-29 MB/sec). iTunes appears to allow three parallel file transfers so that means that if I'm being rate limited it's to the 250-300 mbps level. The plan I had prior to upgrading to gigabit was a 300 mbps speed - but I'd get 350 mbps. According to Xfinity's device status, I'm provisioned for a gigabit and my gateway is gigabit capable. Let me try rebooting my gateway again and test - my wife's not working today so I should survive the internet outage. Just restarted the router (and turned off gateway Wifi) and local tests from my iMac yielded down results of 317, 461, and 475 mbps. Test from the comcast servers to the gateway yielded 487.6, 459.9, and and 464.3 mbps. I'll wait a while to see if this drops as has been the case in the past. Yep, after waiting a few minutes my download speed is now 193 mbps from a locally initiated test and 187.6 from the Comcast speed test page, so it's like a limiter found me again after my gateway reboot.

bskitz · Answer

I agree 100%Believe it or not...In terms of customer service—I think they’ve gotten a little better than what they were! Which isn’t saying much because they were ohhh sooo bad lol.And yep, make sure your internet is up n running before 4:30 central when wife comes home! I did hear a saying that may or may not go like this:Happy wife = Happy LifeAnd let’s see, as far as checking system Hardware requirements as u asked...I did check. However, I overlooked the fact how my 10/100/1000 Ethernet on my laptop would be lacking if I wanted to use port #4 (2.5Gbps) of my 1000Mbps plan that is delineated w/ a reddish color while other 3 are yellow)https://i.imgur.com/vw0Tx6o.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/C7gyWRF.jpgFun fact: according to dslreports, Comcast provisions a ~20%~ overhead w/ XB7, making it possible for us gigabit plan holders to get 1100 - 1200 Mbps!See here 👇https://i.imgur.com/DU86y3G.pngI just got to order a pluggable 2.5Gbps usb c and usb Ethernet adapter to be able to do so— it’s $27.99–$39.99 USD. I’m soooo IN !

bskitz · Answer

And oh after all that , I forgot to post my speedtest.

https://i.imgur.com/787OhL7.jpg

This is hardwired obviously.

Maxes out @ 941 n some change.

I long for symmetrical down n up on Gigabit!

I mean, if GIGABIT PRO pulls symmetrical w/ 2000 Mbps down\2000 Mbps up...

Then Comcast can figure out a way to do it for us non pro subscribers ya know?

The infrastructure is in place right? They needa make it happen cap’n lol

va2124 · Answer

@bskitz wrote:I agree 100%Believe it or not...In terms of customer service—I think they’ve gotten a little better than what they were! Which isn’t saying much because they were ohhh sooo bad lol.And yep, make sure your internet is up n running before 4:30 central when wife comes home! I did hear a saying that may or may not go like this:Happy wife = Happy LifeAnd let’s see, as far as checking system Hardware requirements as u asked...I did check. However, I overlooked the fact how my 10/100/1000 Ethernet on my laptop would be lacking if I wanted to use port #4 (2.5Gbps) of my 1000Mbps plan that is delineated w/ a reddish color while other 3 are yellow)https://i.imgur.com/vw0Tx6o.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/C7gyWRF.jpgFun fact: according to dslreports, Comcast provisions a ~20%~ overhead w/ XB7, making it possible for us gigabit plan holders to get 1100 - 1200 Mbps!See here 👇https://i.imgur.com/DU86y3G.pngI just got to order a pluggable 2.5Gbps usb c and usb Ethernet adapter to be able to do so— it’s $27.99–$39.99 USD. I’m soooo IN !Nah ... my wife is working from home, so when support took out my internet for half an hour I was in deep doo-doo. I couldn't let support take down the internet until 4:30 PM when my wife got off of work. Here's my speed test, and a partial log of speed tests. You can see my current speed test 12:03 PM, and what my speed tests were immediately after a gateway reboot 8:16 AM, then after some time elapsed 8:50 AM (and I think the rate limiter found my gateway's MAC address). Any way, I've been waiting for level 2 to call me back and have yet to hear from them.

EG · Answer

FWIW, Gigabit Pro is FTTH, Gig is DOCSIS. Apples and oranges,

The current upstream / return path bandwidth spectrum allocation on DOCSIS is physically limited. It's the nature of the beast. This is why there isn't as much flexibility with offering faster upload speeds compared to the download.

It's not possible with DOCSIS 3.0. Only with 3.1 but Comcast does not yet offer DOCSIS 3.1 for the upstream.Here is an informative article about the future for the upstream bandwidth capability for DOCSIS based systems;

http://www.multichannel.com/news/distribution/comcast-eyes-upstream-expansion-it-pulls-fiber-deeper/411718

http://www.cablelabs.com/innovations/docsis3-1/

va2124 · Answer

@bskitz wrote:It is apples to oranges isn’t it? Got it .Although the article is promising! Fiber deep!Fingers crossed!Yeah, I could live with half a gig - as long as they let me use it. What really bugs me is I upgraded from 300 mbps (and was getting 350 mbps) and by upgrading to a gigabit, my effective speed actually went down. I could understand them putting on a limiter temporarily if they're experiencing a spot shortage. After all, my wife works from home and has to use Zoom or Skype or Webex or whatever. But this is long term harassment. God save the world from overprotective network administrators. It ain't their personal fiefdoms - long term, customers ought to get at least something near to what they paid for.

bskitz · Answer

It is apples to oranges isn’t it? Got it .Although the article is promising! Fiber deep!Fingers crossed!

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Gigabit plan - Are we allowed to use the bandwidth?

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