Cox Communications Gigabit Internet

[John_ITIC]

I just upgraded my internet service to speed up my YouTube uploads. I'm with Cox in Southern California and they have great cable-based internet service.

Previously, I had some 50 Mbps down and 4 Mbps up, with a new plan installed today (and with a new DOCSIS 3.0 modem) I'm now reaching some 85 Mbps down and 25 Mbps up. The download speed should be in the 150 Mbps range but I think it is capped to under 100 Mbps due to me only using a 100 Mbps router. I'm looking into upgrading to a gigabit LAN router. Unfortunately, Youtube uploads still takes some 100 minutes for a 10 GB video. That made me look for an even better option.

I today learned from a Cox technician that they will very soon (weeks) roll out their new "GigaBlast" Internet service. This is fiber-based and will give me 1 Gbps in both directions. Price is $99/month for the first 24 months. After that I strongly suspect the price will jump significantly. I'll call them tomorrow to check further.

Here's a video that explains the installation procedure as well as a cool speed test:

[Marco]

We had a poll to gauge interest for fiber in my village, but there wasn't enough interest. Excellent cable internet contributed to that, the cable company was very pro-active in keeping quality up.

Then an American company took control of my cable company, now they are are trying to cut costs (and peering) down to the bare minimum to optimize short term profits instead and my internet is going to shit. Foreign investment, just say no.

[coppice]

I am highly suspicious of that speedtest.net report. I know the various speedtest.net servers around the world vary in performance, but I have never seen one show anything above about 600Mbps, and be highly variable. Our own 1Gbps internet service gives rates between about 200Mbps and 600Mbps on the speedtest.net servers connected to our local backbone, but I get a full 1Gbps to and from a number of other places at the same time of day.

That Cox service seems rather expensive at $79 a month, and it didn't seem clear who pays for the installation. We pay about $27 a month, and didn't have to pay for installation with a 24 month contract..

[SeanB]

Many ISP's game speedtest by hard coding the IP of the speedtest servers into DNS and using QOS to give those packets the highest priority on the network, while the rest is assigned the lowest priority. They also often do deliberate downgrading of VOIP traffic that is not their own product, so as to "gently" induce you to use the voip they sell as an add on.

[amyk]

In Japan a few years ago:

[John_ITIC]

It is not yet ready for sale here. I called Cox communications and nobody could tell me much about it. They mentioned 2016 so hopefully Gigablast will be available in a few month's time...