Comcast Broadband Be Blazin'

I'm a bandwidth hog. I'm a bandwidth monkey. I'm even a three-legged bandwidth giraffe. That's probably why Tim Elliott asked if I was interested in getting a bump in my Comcast upload speed. I wasn't getting anything special, just a little head start for an upgrade coming to everyone: 6 Mbps download speed (staying the same), upload speed going from 384 kbps to 1 Mbps. In other words, upload speeds about 3 times faster. The more deluxe option is 8 Mbps download, 2 Mbps upload.

Obstacle #1: I was actually an Earthlink customer for our internet service, not Comcast. Oops! The service and billing are all handled by Comcast, so it's easy to forget. I didn't want to miss out on the upload boost, so I switched over to Comcast's 8/2 service for $52.95/month. That's the cost to an existing Comcast cable customer.

Obstacle #2: We had an old cable modem, and crappy cable wiring in the basement. I've always been pretty happy with our cable internet service, but during this transition it became almost unusable. Because of my client video schedule, we had to live with it for a few days. On Saturday, everything changed when the Comcast dude appeared at my door.

Disclaimer: I really got the royal treatment getting our wiring, etc. upgraded and working smoothly because I agreed to be part of Comcast's PR effort.

The installer was a nice enough dude, but apparently Comcast installers still aren't familiar with Macs. That's not good. We got it working quickly enough, but Comcast really should train all their installers on Mac networking. Julio Ojeda-Zapata said his Comcast installer was very Mac-savvy, however.

OK. THEN, THE MAGIC HAPPENED:

We really should've made a video of me freaking out after the Speakeasy speed test. These numbers are 5 or 6 times faster download, and seriously 20 times faster upload speed. Holy f*cking shit!

Now, these speeds aren't there all the time. The big download boost is courtesy of Comcast's PowerBoost which can double (in this case, more than double) your download speed if the excess bandwidth is available in the network. Still - it's a phenomenal boost that's definitely going to make me more productive and just happier doing all the stuff I do with video, photos, and general web surfing. Yeah, we're talking really heavy HD porn usage here.

A FEW SPEED TESTS:

• Uploading a half-hour, 176 MB video of Norm Coleman's announcement speech for The UpTake took over an hour before.
  Now: 17 minutes. This is where the boost will really make a difference for me.


• Downloading No Country for Old Men on the iTunes store. I first tried downloading it in the airport over my EVDO card, which would have taken 120+ hours (!). The 1.32 GB file was done in 22 minutes at home.


• Uploading 3 full-resolution photos to Flickr. I usually scale them down to 1200 pixels and have to wait awhile.
  Now, by the time I was done saying, "Honey! I'm uploading 3 full-size photos to Flickr and it's going super fast!" it was pretty much done. Wow.

I haven't had a chance to do any live video, but that will be my next test. I'm literally trying to dream up ways I can take advantage of my new bandwidth superpowers. I'm sure the $150/month 50 Mbps service is crazy awesome – Julio has the whole rundown in the Pioneer Press – but this screaming 8/2 service is more than enough for my current needs at a third the price.

In conclusion: After a few snafus, I'm totally thrilled with the upgraded service. Unplug your Comcast cable modem, wait about 15 seconds, and plug it back in. You might be pleasantly surprised to see a nice speed boost. And if you're not on 8/2 - you're already wasting time watching stupid YouTube videos, do you really want to waste time waiting for them to load?