My friends family recently just got highspeed internet service for him for his birthday or something (nice eh?).

For a while he was directly hooked up to the cable modem, but just the other day, their family installed a wireless router so their laptop could also get the cable access. However, my friend's computer is hard wired into the router.

Ever since then my friend has been saying that the internet is so much slower than it used to be.

Would putting in a router cause noticable slow down for everyday browsing, email, chat etc?

It shouldn't. I noticed no speed difference when I addded my router.

If the routers MTU is set incorrectly you can see a slowdown.

Sorry for the ignorance, but i know nothing about networking

Is this something that they could have easily changed/messed up? These are definately not power users that would go mess around with that sort of stuff.

I think it was actually installed by a comcast guy... would this be something that he forgot to do? If they set it up, would it be a step that was easily missed or not the default or something?

Routers in general should not slow down the Broadband connection.

However since there is the “Comcast Install Factor”, I would not suggest to someone who does not well the issues to “mess around” with Comcast. If he will mess the settings next visit will be expensive.

I would connect the computer back to the Modem and actually measure the “Speed”.

Then put the Router again and measure again the “Speed” with the Router.

How to measure the “Speed”?

The best way to find your functional Internet connection “Speed” for this purpose is to download 10MB of file from Microsoft.com, using I.E.

When it starts to download it will start High and after 30 sec. (approx.) it will stabilize.

The download is reported in KB (Kilo Bytes).

Measure the time that it took to download under both conditions.

If the second measure is significantly slower (took more time) tell your friend to call Comcast.

Sounds like a good idea.

You don't happen to know the address to that file do you? Of was that a hypothetical file

We just had a similar discussion about this - in which there was some suspicion that Comcast may be turning down the speed when a router and/or multiple MAC adressing is sensed by their equipment.


http://www.cable-modems.org/forum/read.php...f=2&i=497&t=497

Evil! Very evil

Those links don't work for me

SonicDragon,

Try the link again. I'll see if I can get the Comcast one fixed as well.
Sorry about that.

At least theirs hasn't stopped working yet, it's just slow. However, now i'm curious. I wouldn't mind giving comcast a call and see what they say about having more than 1 computer hooked up

MTU is not something the average joe or even tech would do anything about. At least not the $12 an hour dorks that a cable company hire to do field work.

http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks/MTU

That link above has the routine to run to test your line to figure out the proper MTU. You need to do that WITHOUT the router connected. You figure out the proper MTU number then connect the router and go into it's setup find the section(if it has one, not all routers do) and set it up to the proper MTU.

If you can let us know what brand/model of router is being used we might be able to guide you further on that.

Thanks nlinecomputers! I've got that bookmarked now

SonicDragon,

Here is the link to ComCast:

http://www.comcast.com/Support/Corp1/FAQ/F...Detail_418.html

Note the part about multi-IP's

Hope this helps.

THAT IS JUST AWFUL!

They shouldn't do that. I only have 1 comptuer, so it's not an issue for me, but it is still extremely unfair. I can see if the user goes over the band width limit that they'd want to charge extra, but charging extra just because a user has more than one computer hooked up is just an underhanded way to make more money (as if they needed that) imho.

SonicD:

I'm not sure that the Comcast FAQ answer indicates that they will charge extra for all home networking. It just seems to say that they will offer to supply the hardware and software for the (not specified as but inferred by me as) digital illiterati. "seems" is the operative word there. The actual answer is vague enough that Comcast could probably claim that their intent was to limit home networking to only those that pay for it. I think the" multilple-IPs" is a reference to customers who pay for fixed IP addresses (most are DHCP assigned) and have more than one fixed IP address.

That said, they'd lose me as a customer tout de suite if they start trying to charge me for having a router, or for trying to control what goes on behind it.

It's this line that worries me. To me, it sort of makes it sound like you'll need that extra service.

But, you are completely right. It is ambigious enough to let comcast go any way it wants.

That may be! (I hope that is the case!) I never thought about it that way.

Regardless, if they were to charge extra, you think they would loose too many customers to make it worth their while. However... they do sort of have a monopoly out here.

SonicDragon,
Maybe your friend or someone can call Comcast and ask what their policy is concerning networking and router connections.

This is defintely an interesting mystery.

I clicked through to a link in the first link Rons gave and found this very interesting piece at Geek R Us!:

http://www.geeksrus.com/archives/000329.html#000329

Very interesting and if true ... Comcast should make this very clear to clients so these problems do not happen in the future - and - so their tech support can work on real problems instead of getting frustrated with folks that are rightfully frustrated by something they were never told.

If true, that little tidbit should be part of full disclosure and truth in advertising. I smell a classaction lawsuit in the making if they were not being truthful with folks buying their service from the start - meaning when they 'changed the water" (thanks to Firesign Theatre for the line).

Fran,

That is a good link but a wierd way to run a network. Cox cable tracks MAC numbers but they don't hand out IP numbers to unregistered MAC addresses. You'd think comcast would do the same thing. This let you on the network but maybe not method sure makes for difficult access.

Fran,
Thanks for the link. That could explain why some Comcast users are having problems employing a router.

The sticky topics may push everything off the main page, but this seems like it may be worth sticking. Lot of Comcast users out there.

Excellent suggestion littlebone ... done!

http://speedtest.dslreports.com/


I have comcast HSI, but the tech did not touch my router nor any of my systems.

I have the cable modem connected to a Linksys WRT54G running updated firmware. My PC is connected to the router's built-in switch, while my grandmother's PC is on the wireless segment.

My server is also connected to the router's switch.

At that site, I get very close to 3Mb/s, and I have gotten 1014KB/s on one file (~8MB; mozilla.org)


A router should not decrease your *bandwidth* at all. Speed is *not* bandwidth... Speed equates out to be ping times basically, and a router could add a few milliseconds to your ping time - not anything remotely noticeable.


You *do not* need the multiple-IP service. The whole point of a router is to route packets between two networks, in this case, the Internet and your Lan. The router is the only computer that Comcast can see. I can't think of any way that an ISP could possibly prevent the use of a router and home network, other than coming out to physically check every so often, but think, how smart would that be?

I checked out the sas.r2.attbi.com link and was told that my M.A.C. address was not registered with Comcast. So I changed the M.A.C. clone address in the router to the new address and got this from the lovely folks at Comcast when I refreshed the link:



The "Click here" has link that I chose not to follow.




To make changes to this subscription, please contact AT&T Broadband Internet directly.

I thought I'd pass along something I learned at work that may have a bearing on this. The routers we deal with clone the MAC address of the host computer, so that the ISP sees only the MAC addy it's used to seeing. Also, back to the original question, we advise customers that using WEP can indeed slow the connection, 20-50% in some conditions and depending on encryption strength.

Wow!! I often wondered about the overhead associated with that. I'm not going to turn it off because of that but it is interesting to know.

I don't have encryption turned on. From what I read probably the best place to use encryption would be a free hotspot BUT it seems like those places don't want you to use encryption. (I've never used a hotspot - free or paid but I will some time when we travel).