After much prodding by my kids and neighbors, I finally signed up for Comcast high speed internet service. It took 2 days of working with their tech people before the modem would finally work but tonight things finally jelled. I am less than thrilled with things however. Speed is Horendous. I wait and wait and wait for pages to appear. It took over 5 minutes for me to connect to this IBBS to write this. If I want to watch something on You Tube, I better go eat dinner first before everything loads. I had more speed on dial-up and I bet I had more speed with my 2400 bps phone modem of 10 years ago. There are no other programs running at the same time I'm online. Is there anything I can do about this? Has anyone else experienced this? There is a tech guy coming out Sunday to check things out but if he doesnt find anything wrong, is there anything I can do besides go back to dial up? I've tried to connect to the internet using just the browsers and also connecting by first going thru AOL. there is no difference in speed. I'm on an iMac, 800 mhz Power PC G4, using OS 10.4.3. My wife tells me to calm down before I have a stroke. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr. Any suggestions on what might be the problem with this "High speed" internet? Thanks.

If you're getting dial-up speeds on Cable Modem, then something is seriously wrong!

It would help to know your setup:
Cable comes into the house connects to their modem and then what?

What's between your Mac and the cable modem?

What results do you get when you go to this site and check your speed?

My numbers tonight connecting to the Chicago test server are:

Terry,

I intend to buy a router but have not yet done so. So my setup is that the modem is directly connected to my iMac. I tried to connect to your Test speed site but gave up after 5 minutes because its taking too long to connect. It took me almost 4-6 minutes to connect to this iBBS this morning. Do you have any more suggestions? Is it possible there is something wrong with the iMac or the way I have any settings set up? We'll see what the tech guy says sunday when he comes over but as of right now I'm stumped. At least my blood pressure seems down after a nights sleep.

I'm on Comcast and just connected to Chicago and got:

There could be some sort of compatibility problem between the iMac and the modem. But it's more likely there's something wrong with the connection to your house or the modem itself.

I had a similar problem with Comcast a few months ago, and they finally replaced the modem to fix it.

How is the modem connected to the service? The modem should be coming off the line "before" any TVs. Our cable is split with one line going to the modem and the other going to a powered splitter (boosts the signal) for the multiple TV lines.

Just checked my speeds on comcast and got the following

A little comic relief: My AOL dialup results

Download Speed: 39 kbps (4.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 78 kbps (9.8 KB/sec transfer rate)

Nina - What is your broadband service? Cable, DSL, fiber?

Nina said Comcast, so she's on cable.

Thanks Jack for the speedier response.

Brighthouse/Earthlink Cable. speed 4414 dn and 474 up. In Farmington

I just checked the Chicago test site and got the following

OK, now I'm really angry. After powering my modem on/off 20-30 times over the last 2 days and also connecting/disconnecting the cable that comes into the house almost the same amount of times, I was finally able to run the speed test from Chicago. My results: 65 kbps download speed, 347 kpbs upload speed. The download speed is almost the same as dial-up but the upload speed seems to be the same as most of the other peoples results. Anyone have an idea of why that is? In any case, hopefully the tech guy coming Sunday can resolve the problem. Stay tuned.

First of all. What system are you running? If OS X make sure your internet settings are set to look for your ethernet connection FIRST. It should be first in the list (you can slide it there). Your system might still be trying to look for your phone modem and hanging while it keeps trying that. Go to System Prefs, Network and see what it says. It should NOT say internal modem. Try, in that window using Location Automatic and Show Network Status, where Ethernet should be your choice. You should also under Ethernet be setup to get DHCP, but I expect the
Comcast guy did that for you. I've had very good luck simply calling 1-800-comcast and letting them talk me through. their Mac guys seem pretty knowledgeable.

Try punching in your own DNS server values. Comcast may be fast but they are natorious for DNS server problems. See if it makes any difference.

Do you still have your telephone line cord connected to the internal phone modem port? Disconnect it unless you need to receive faxes.

That has nothing to do with the connection speed.

quote:

Originally posted by Donna:
Do you still have your telephone line cord connected to the internal phone modem port? Disconnect it unless you need to receive faxes.

DNS wouldn't affect a speed test either once it starts. This sounds more like a large number of dropped packets.

What if the Network settings are set to check for internal modem first? We haven 't gotten an answer to that yet.