Question for Comcast users that switched from residential to business class internet.

I currently have residential Comcast internet and my speeds are 30+ down and 6 up. I like the speed of it but of course Comcast screws us by making you buy business class if you want a static ip. I can't afford 2 connections and cant afford faster speeds in the business tier so my question is this: For those that have the 12/2 speed did you notice a huge drop in speed over what you had with the residential service? Was it worth the switch?

P.S. I want the static ip and don't want any dynamic dns setups.

Thanks in advance.

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Comments

cyberguypr

Tagged. I am in the same boat trying to figure out if I really want to switch.

Everyone

I made the switch back in August. It's so much better. The low latency is great. 10ms ping to most anywhere, still haven't seen more than 50ms even when I'm saturating my connection.

I hate being forced into leasing a modem... but the fact that I was able to plug the modem I own in and load balance it with the leased modem more than makes up for it. They don't support this of course, but I don't exactly need their support.

I consistently get 2.5 MB/sec down and ~500KB/sec up real world usage with this setup.

With residential, it'd be all over the place. Plus my pings were 200ms+ a lot of the time when I still had the residential service.

The low latency, consistent speed, SLA, and fact that you can run a server without them blocking anything, make it well worth it. Plus there's no monthly download cap either. Their residential service has a monthly download cap of like 250 GB I think it was.

kriscamaro68

I was hoping you would chime in Everyone since I knew that you made the change recently. I do the occasional gaming on my connection which kinda worries me about the speed but if latency goes down then that shouldn't be an issue. So they had to provide a modem? I have a modem already that should work and don't want to pay them to come hook anything up since I am sure I can do it all myself. Did they still have to come out and hook up anything for you? Did you have to pay a setup fee?

Thanks for the info.

Everyone

Yes they have to come out. Unless you previously had a Business Class connection, they come out and run a brand new line. It seems kind of dumb since they connect to the same place. I can plug my Business Class modem into the old residential line, and it still works.

Yeah I said the same thing about the modem, but they will not sell you the service without it. It's like $5/mo. My bill is $65/month for the 12/2 service. The have to do it in order to protect themselves with the SLA they offer. They wouldn't be able to offer the same level of service if they let you use whatever modem you want. Plus your residential modem can't handle multiple static IPs and other things they have available. The modem they gave me is an SMC. It has a 4 port gigabit switch and built-in Firewall. I believe it's a DOCSIS 3 modem, and supports all the way up to their 100/10 package. It's a pretty good modem, but my old DOCSIS 2 Motorola SB5101 modem seems to be able to get a little higher speeds at this level.

I believe the install fee was $50.

The lower latency is far more important for gaming than higher bandwidth. The only online game I play right now is WoW. I used to get anywhere between 100ms to 500ms ping in the game, and would occasionally "lag out". Now I always have between 10ms to 20ms, and never get disconnected.

This is how I have everything setup: Budget Laboratory: Part 1 - Multi-WAN Load Balancing with pfSense on VMWare Workstation | Fix the Exchange!
Although I have since upgraded to pfSense 2.0.

cyberguypr

If I go for the 12/2 package with 1 static IP I'll end up at $82 per month ($66 right now). Not bad considering I get a real playground. Install fees:

Installation Fee: 1 year contract = $199, 2 years = $99, 3 years = $49

Everyone

I really should have a static IP, but my experience has been my IP never changes. I don't know how long their DHCP leases are set for. I never turn my modems off. I've had a couple power outages, and after the power comes back on, I still get the same IP.

I'm probably the only Business Class customer within at least a 5 mile radius though. Might be different if I actually lived in the city.

kriscamaro68

Well I think I may bit the bullet and switch here pretty soon. I think I am going to get 5 static ip addresses though cause it will be fun to have them all and have my servers setup on different ones. Thanks for all the info Everyone.

kriscamaro68

One more thing Everyone. Did they promise atleast 12 down with their SLA or just that you would have a reliable connection? Also with the business class do they guarantee a response time when service is down? I would suspect they do.

Everyone

kriscamaro68 wrote: »

One more thing Everyone. Did they promise atleast 12 down with their SLA or just that you would have a reliable connection? Also with the business class do they guarantee a response time when service is down? I would suspect they do.

Yes the bandwidth is guaranteed. Yes they are required to have someone on site within 4 hours.

ptilsen

I have the 50/10 residential service and support nine different businesses in the Twin Cities metro area that have services ranging from 12/2 to 100/10. I have not noticed any significant differences in bandwidth or latency between the residential and business services, but then I haven't looked too closely. My own latency is typically under 60ms, which is acceptable.

My understanding is that Comcast guarantees a response within four hours on the business side. My experience is that this is true, but the actual up-time is not under an SLA. It is priced, managed, and supported really as an in-between for typical business services and residential services. Comcast actually provides enterprise services as well (and in fact, I have two clients with 10/10mbps and 30/30mbps fiber lines), and these have SLAs and the experience is similar to what you would expect when getting a T1, T3, Ethernet, etc.

kriscamaro68

Thanks again for the info guys. I appreciate it.

powerfool

I cannot see how supporting more than one static IP address is a deficiency in a residential class cable modem... I was the third Comcast @Home customer in my metro area back in 1999 and I was able to add IP addresses as I felt... pinging for available addresses and just assigning them to additional computers... until I setup a multi-homed Linux box with IP Chains and NAT.The business class has only two real differences:1) Backbone routing: they route you over a different WAN network but you utilize the very same "node" network in your neighborhood.2) Quality of Service: they implement QoS on the "node" network in your neighborhood to give priority to business class customers... I am also suspicious that they are throttling residential customers even when there is no contention for resources, which I believe to be a bad practice.