Comcast, beware: New city-run broadband offers 1Gbps for $60 a month

[wizzi01]

Well I guess that's the trade off. Thats the first i have heard of no caps from comcast. Cheers for that deal.

I believe it's called Xfi Advantage. Like I said it is $15 a month with rental, their internet security(which I turn off) and no data cap. It is only available for certain tiers of internet of which I have no idea where it starts since I have Gigabit.

 

[Cr4ckm0nk3y]

And it makes surveillence even easier for the government. No longer do they need to go to an ISP and tap their lines or ask them to let them tap them. They own them!

I would be more concerned with censorship than surveillance. Very little can be done to stop a municipality from blocking certain sites or content they choose to block.

 

[Grimlaking]

I would be more concerned with censorship than surveillance. Very little can be done to stop a municipality from blocking certain sites or content they choose to block.

VPN works. But you'de need a high end service for high speed access.

 

[Jagger100]

I would be more concerned with censorship than surveillance. Very little can be done to stop a municipality from blocking certain sites or content they choose to block.

Actually the blocked entity could sue on 1st Amendment.

In fact in general, the government would be more indelibly constrained from doing anything that you can prove they're doing. At least wrt the constitution.

You can't sign away your rights in some EULA you clicked on once and forgot about.

CIA is going to tap you either way regardless.

 

[nilepez]

I would love to have 1Gbit. It would make having a current offsite backup easier. It takes a while to copy 1TB with my 10Mbit upload speed.
Some people can put 1Gbit to some good hard use...

This is probably the best argument for a Gb connection, but if we had symmetrical connections, then far less would probably be adequate. As an example, I've probably got 15TB of data on my nas (give or take). If I had a 300 Mb symmetrical connection, I'd be completely backed up in about 5 days (assuming the backup service would let me upload at that rate), which I think is more than adequate. Hell, I could live with 100 Mb/s up....15 days isn't bad either....cuz after that, changes will mostly be small.

So Gb/s is awesome, but the real issue for me is just that upstream for consumers is generally pathetic. This is especially true for Comcast, which actually has a slower upload rate today than they had 5 or 6 years ago....I believe it's 1/2 what it was then (5mb vs 10mb)

 

[Grimlaking]

This is probably the best argument for a Gb connection, but if we had symmetrical connections, then far less would probably be adequate. As an example, I've probably got 15TB of data on my nas (give or take). If I had a 300 Mb symmetrical connection, I'd be completely backed up in about 5 days (assuming the backup service would let me upload at that rate), which I think is more than adequate. Hell, I could live with 100 Mb/s up....15 days isn't bad either....cuz after that, changes will mostly be small.

So Gb/s is awesome, but the real issue for me is just that upstream for consumers is generally pathetic. This is especially true for Comcast, which actually has a slower upload rate today than they had 5 or 6 years ago....I believe it's 1/2 what it was then (5mb vs 10mb)

Yea I use spectrum right now and it has a 25mb upload rate and a 500mb download rate. Why they are not symmetrical I really don't get. I can get fiber but don't like the company offering it. So I COULD have 500down and up.

 

[cyklondx]

Yea I use spectrum right now and it has a 25mb upload rate and a 500mb download rate. Why they are not symmetrical I really don't get. I can get fiber but don't like the company offering it. So I COULD have 500down and up.

ok so most of the time its a coax line, and modem itself is limited to 4-24 downstream frequencies and 2-8 upstream frequencies.
In most cases you are hardware limited, as comcast admins do not know what they are doing most of the time - so if you have router that supports 20 x 20 you'll likely get 20 x 20.

(comcast does limit how much Hz you get per channel / stream, without those limits you could potentially get 1Gbit/s on current docsis 3 modems.)

 

[Grimlaking]

ok so most of the time its a coax line, and modem itself is limited to 4-24 downstream frequencies and 2-8 upstream frequencies.
In most cases you are hardware limited, as comcast admins do not know what they are doing most of the time - so if you have router that supports 20 x 20 you'll likely get 20 x 20.

(comcast does limit how much Hz you get per channel / stream, without those limits you could potentially get 1Gbit/s on current docsis 3 modems.)

Ok so you know this better than I do clearly. Are you saying I could go out and buy a modem that was capable of more. Replace the one Comcast is renting me and get a better connection? Please help me Obi Wan you're our only hope!

 

[cyklondx]

Ok so you know this better than I do clearly. Are you saying I could go out and buy a modem that was capable of more. Replace the one Comcast is renting me and get a better connection? Please help me Obi Wan you're our only hope!

Not always, but most of the times.

 

[nilepez]

Yea I use spectrum right now and it has a 25mb upload rate and a 500mb download rate. Why they are not symmetrical I really don't get. I can get fiber but don't like the company offering it. So I COULD have 500down and up.

I had spectrum in Dallas. It wasn't quite as good as it was before the buy out (because prices went up), but they did have a good upload rate. Honestly, i'm surprised you're only getting 25 up with a d/l rate that good. I thought that's what I got when I had 50mbps up (or maybe it was 100....can't remember now).

So overall, I liked them. Comcast's upstream is pathetic. 5Mbps isn't what I'd call broadband, but download is decent and I guess they're increasing it, but I don't really need more on the downside. I want more up so I can do a cloud backup.

 

[nilepez]

Ok so you know this better than I do clearly. Are you saying I could go out and buy a modem that was capable of more. Replace the one Comcast is renting me and get a better connection? Please help me Obi Wan you're our only hope!

I"ve got comcast and I always use my own modem, though they gave me one (no charge) that's sitting in a closet, because I needed an HD cable box and for some reason to get that I needed to take this unused cable modem. Makes no sense, but whatever.