[lug] Have Internet providers been discussed recently?

[Bear Giles]

I think the benefits with business, besides better responsiveness, is the
upstream bandwidth and more reliable downstream bandwidth.

Remember that no residential provider will provide 100 households with 10
Mbps bandwidth a pipe that's 1000 Mbps wide. It's always going to be less
since the provider knows that some people will be on vacation, others will
be doing other things than surfing or watching online videos, etc. And if
the system is heavily loaded because everyone is downloading youtube videos
of cute kittens then it's still just a problem until the video is fully
downloaded and buffered.

I don't know the current ratios but I thought it was around 20% for awhile,
that is it assumed that 80% of the users were inactive (e.g., reading the
web page they just downloaded) at any time. Obviously that would have had
to been bumped as youtube and hulu took off.

Business users would get a bigger slice of that pie.


On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 3:53 PM, Gary Hodges <gary.hodges at noaa.gov> wrote:

> Hmmm.  Just checked pricing.  The cheapest business is about $12 more
> per month than what I have now.  Speeds look about the same, though
> business might be a bit quicker upstream.  I could drop limited basic
> cable ($20) and still come out ahead.  Which reminds me...
>
> I read somewhere that getting Comcast Internet automatically gets you
> limited basic cable.  I don't think that is a planned feature, it's just
> how it is.  Or at least how it was presented wherever I read it.  Anyone
> know if that is true?
>
>
> On 09/12/2012 03:21 PM, Dan Ferris wrote:
> > When I was living in Longmont I had Comcast Business. The difference
> > between business and residential is very striking.
> >
> > Dan
> >
> > On 9/12/2012 2:30 PM, Steven A Hart wrote:
> >> I'm sure alot of us feel your pain concerning Comcast. When I bought a
> >> new home I struggled with the same thing and ended up sticking with
> >> Comcast but only for network. I looked into other options and long
> >> story short, Comcast was the only one who could offer me the network
> >> speed required for my wife and I. We started out with the dreaded
> >> triple-play package and knocked it down to just network. Cable TV and
> >> comcast phone were simply wastes for me.
> >>
> >> When dealing with Comcast, make your life much more simple and don't
> >> have a tech come out unless there is a real technical issue that needs
> >> troubleshooting. If it's just start/stop of service, use of their
> >> crappy cable boxes, etc, find the nearest Comcast office and walk in
> >> the door. I think that most of us can handle connecting coax cables in
> >> our own homes.
> >>
> >> Just some thoughts....best of luck with the situation!
> >>
> >> Steve
> >>
> >> On 09/12/2012 02:21 PM, Gary Hodges wrote:
> >>> Comcast has upset me enough I'm ready to bail on them.  Service was
> >>> great for years, but for about 3 months it has been intermittent, and
> >>> poor when it does work.  Twice I have scheduled appts, leaving work
> >>> 3-hours early.  When scheduling I was exceedingly explicit that I
> >>> wouldn't have a phone because the Internet wasn't working.  They were
> no
> >>> shows at both appts because no one answered when the tech called.
> >>> Ugggg!  I better get the $20 missed appt credit for both of those.
> >>>
> >>> I've done some searching for other providers, but thought I'd run the
> >>> question by lug before making calls.  In the end I'll probably just
> >>> stick with Comcast, but I told my wife it is now up to her to work with
> >>> them.  She said she doesn't talk to tech support people.  Maybe I'll
> >>> give my son the phone number.
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