[ale] Comcast speeds

[Scott McDonald]

When I check the Speakeasy speedtest url from my comcast at home, it
usually shows me getting 20-24Mbs download and ~360K up.

I ordered the tripple play from comcast 2 weeks ago: phone,tv,net for $99.
Its got some sort of burstable feature for short durations - after
that I get between 8-12Mbs down.   Makes a big difference pulling just
a song or two here or there, or hitting speed tests, etc... but
torrent downloads don't benefit from the bursts since those take a lot
longer.

I had originally ordered Speakeasy when I moved in on Feb 15th.  When
March 15th hit and Speakeasy was still telling me I had to wait a few
more weeks for Covad to do their installation part, I canceled my
order and broke down and called comcast.  I just didn't want to get up
and drive in to work at 3am anymore because my service wasn't up yet
and I needed to restart something simple.  Comcast had me up the next
day.

Speakeasy was difficult when it came to canceling.  Continued to
charge my card for service.  Tried charging me installation fees  and
early termination fees for canceling a service that was never working
(finally bitched up the chain high enough for a refund).  During my 4
week wait, I would call every few days, and be promised a call back -
never once got a call back.  Bellsouth had the loop installed the
first week, and the circuit was live, it just wasn't patched at the
point of dmark to my internal condo wiring.  All I was waiting on was
Covad to come patch the live circuit to my wiring... and after 3+
weeks I couldn't stand it any longer.  If I'd had a tone generator I
would have patched it myself, trespass be damned... but anyway...

Its done - I went comcast - and I'm really happy with the bundle.  The
phone sounds good (first non-cell I've had in over 4 years - and no
long distance or minutes to worry about).  The on-demand tv stuff
works good.  The bandwidth is fast - haven't seen any problems from
the old "cable is shared" argument.  I use sshfs from work to mount
150G music partition at home and play tunes all day without problems.

Occasionally, my dhcp IP times out, and I have to update all my dns
records etc... to get everything working again - which is a pain in
the ass.  So I do kinda wish I had Speakeasy with a static IP, but I
think once I get dynamic dns working with zoneedit.com I'll be good to
go - starting work on that tonight.