6 ms·

As a lifelong sysadmin and former ISP person, I would have never thought that I would be impressed with Comcast. However, after I lost a sweet free colo deal (

by mrbill 9y ago

As a lifelong sysadmin and former ISP person, I would have never thought that I would be impressed with Comcast. However, after I lost a sweet free colo deal (company I used to work for, got sold) a few years ago, I decided to move my main system back to the house. I signed up for Comcast Business, because AT&T's only "business" option with static IPs involved 1:1 NAT through their crappy 2Wire-brand gateway. Anyway, years later - I'd give Comcast Biz a score of 95/100. When I called to get PTR records added for my five static IPs, I ended up on the phone with the guy who was typing them in. For the very few times I've had to call them (less than once a year), I've never had a tech try to run me through a "script", or argue that I didn't know what I was talking about when I tell them I've already done all the debugging and the problem was on their end. Had upstream issues once (even to their own speedtest server, so it wasn't going outside of the Comcast network), and after a couple of calls I woke up one Saturday morning to two techs and a manager on my front porch. "We brought an unlocked modem and everything we might need, not leaving until this is fixed." They were at my place for about an hour, then went down the road to fix something on a junction box, and I had full speeds back. Couldn't get them to leave that uncapped modem, though...

joecool1029 9y ago
Comcast Business Tier support had been decent. However, now they threaten a $99 service call charge if they can't replicate the issue or it goes away by the time the tech shows up. Response time is usually within a day but for something up the network a bit they'll just throw blame at the customer and bill them. Otherwise, I will say that lately their commitment to keeping equipment up on the east coast has been admirable. My house has been without power since Friday but they threw generators on all the fiber nodes' power supplies to keep things up. pic: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DXjUdljXUAElsRX.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DXjUdljXUAElsRX.jpg
- jacobush 9y ago
  That is incredible!
- thinkloop 9y ago
  Were you able to make use of it despite your house not having power?
  - joecool1029 9y ago
    Yes, the cable wires are below power lines and even when they get ripped down from the poles they usually keep working. EDIT: I am guessing Comcast learned after Sandy took out power for a month. We had power for a few days until the batteries died out on the nodes when Sandy hit... even with all the lines ripped down everywhere.
- lilbobbytables 9y ago
  Interesting. Is a power supply required for cable based internet? If not, then they certainly would need to do that in order to maintain a level of feature parity. It would be pretty annoying to have a generator running at home, but no internet (although it certainly still happens with downed wires). Or worse, you have power, but the fiber box doesn't.
  - joecool1029 9y ago
    So that magical box on the pole has batteries inside. Depending on how they have it set up, you get around 24-48 hours of battery power before the fiber node converting optical to coaxial goes dead. They often have a LED on the outside showing red or green depending on status of the node. A mini generator solves the issue of powering the node if your power utility is worthless and can't restore things after a few days.
taspeotis 9y ago
The service you get from a business tier is nothing like the service you get from residential. In Australia I managed a thousand or so ADSL connections with TID [1] and the support was excellent. Telstra is much maligned in Australia, but it's not like they can't provide good service. [1] https://www.telstra.com.au/business-enterprise/solutions/network-services/connectivity/internet-services https://www.telstra.com.au/business-enterprise/solutions/net...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
deathanatos 9y ago
I also have Comcast Business, but I'd give them a 40/100. (But most of that score is because the service usually works.) > I've never had a tech try to run me through a "script", or argue that I didn't know what I was talking about when I tell them I've already done all the debugging and the problem was on their end. I've had two major outages: * One outage where IPv6 connectivity was completely lost, and IPv4 connectivity was completely unaffected. I noticed this immediately, because I don't use Comcast's DNS servers; instead I use Google's, over IPv6 exclusively, so it was immediately apparent. * One outage where IPv4 SYN packets would go unanswered, however, once answered, the connection was quite stable. IPv6 was completely unaffected. In both instances, the tech on the phone insisted that "my signal strength" was "very weak", and that they'd send a tech out to fix that right away. The representatives both time were unable to comprehend — let alone answer — my question of "how would signal strength only affect one of IPv4/v6? Do you think the copper can somehow discriminate which protocol is in use?" In the end, the representative adjusted by strength until it was supposedly awesome, and in neither case did the problem get resolved at that point, of course. It took much insisting to get them to look at their own network in the first case, and to replace my modem in the latter case. (I have no idea what went wrong in the latter case, but my guess is "something with NAT" and/or the IPv4 hardware. Regardless, replacing the modem did fix the issue.) I've also tried — and have yet to convince them of this: every single one of their black Comcast-branded modems will forget the 2 GHz WiFi WPA-PSK key on any sort of power cycle or reset, and revert back to the default, but only for the key. (All other settings, such as port forwardings or the SSID for the AP remain intact.) This, I believe, only happens if you use an actual key; if you use a password from which a key is derived, you won't be affected. They've also tried to upsell me during outages … which, really? Why do companies do that? I did at least finally get a representative that was human enough to laugh when I told them that the modem was doing the "blinken light dance". (The LEDs on the front panel go through a sequence as the device boots and acquires a connection.) > When I called to get PTR records added for my five static IPs, I would love to have this … I just didn't think I could request such a thing without the hell of trying to explain what a PTR record is.
- mrbill 9y ago
  I've got their "Business Wireless Gateway", a Cisco bit that really shouldn't have the Cisco name on it.. I turned off its built-in WiFi and use a Ubiquiti UAP-AC-PRO. The BWG just functions as a modem and somewhere to plug the WAN interface of my USG "router" into.
TheAceOfHearts 9y ago
I'd be very interested in reading about what you're doing with your home network, and how much you're paying for their services. When I last looked, Comcast charged around $200/mo for 250Mbps down / 20Mbps up, unlimited bandwidth, and a static IP. At the time it seemed too much, but now I pay around $150 for for 130Mbps down / 13Mbps up, unlimited bandwidth, and a dynamic IP. So I might have to give it a bit more serious consideration.
- mrbill 9y ago
  Public-facing email/web/etc server (that replaced my colo box), everything else is behind a NAT "router" that also uses one of the static IPs. I do some minor web hosting for friends, etc. I started out with their 27/7 plan, then for years had 50 down/10 up, but I recently talked with their retention department and managed to upgrade to 150/20 with my same five statics, for $140-150ish/month. No bandwidth caps (it's not even metered) or anything.
- overcast 9y ago
  Where do you live with those completely insane prices? Spectrum(TimeWarner) in New York is $60 for 100/10. Which usually pegs at 120/12 any time of the day I use it.
  - mrbill 9y ago
    As the other reply said - Texas. I'm in Houston. If I lived in another part of town, I could get AT&T gigabit for $100ish a month, but my house was built in '57 and my only options for Internet right now are Comcast or (slow) AT&T DSL.
  - eximius 9y ago
    I live in Texas, it has comparably bad pricing.
joncrane 9y ago
What is the price difference (in percent) between a typical residential service and a typical business service?
- mrbill 9y ago
  50-100% more, depending on speed and features. However, Business Class typically has no metering/caps, better support, and a faster SLA for getting things fixed (depending on your area and the type of outage).
protonfish 9y ago
My current place of employment has Comcast. We have a major outage every couple months during which all work ceases. I rely on an Internet connection for everything I do professionally so I stay away from cable because stability > speed.
- theandrewbailey 9y ago
  Funny story: my employer switched to Comcast business because our old DSL line went down about once a month. We've had one outage in a year, but everyone got hit by that. (this outage: https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-tiny-error-shut-off-the-internet-for-parts-of-the-us/ https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-tiny-error-shut-off-the-in... )
- toxican 9y ago
  Meanwhile I've had Comcast residentually for about a year now without any noticed outages. At work we've got a local ISP (who we actually do design work for!) and our internet goes down once or twice a week at least. There's really no point in saying a nationwide company is reliable or not because it's incredibly region-specific. At home I've never had connection issues, I generally get the speeds I pay for, and I've never had any billing issues. But you ask someone who lives 100 miles in any direction with Comcast and they'll have a completely different story.
dangerboysteve 9y ago
We have a few offices in the USA and the offices are connected to Comcast. I was really surprised how good they were after reading all the blog posts about how bad they were. In both locations they offered us the best service (Sip trunking and internet) at the best price. Not only that, they also had to shell out for a major build to one of our facilities without us flipping any part of the bill. When we've had problems, required changes, they were really fast and competent. I can't speak for their consumer division but I would recommend them based on my experiences.

by mrbill 9y ago

joecool1029 9y ago

Comcast Business Tier support had been decent. However, now they threaten a $99 service call charge if they can't replicate the issue or it goes away by the time the tech shows up. Response time is usually within a day but for something up the network a bit they'll just throw blame at the customer and bill them. Otherwise, I will say that lately their commitment to keeping equipment up on the east coast has been admirable. My house has been without power since Friday but they threw generators on all the fiber nodes' power supplies to keep things up. pic: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DXjUdljXUAElsRX.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DXjUdljXUAElsRX.jpg

jacobush 9y ago
That is incredible!
thinkloop 9y ago
Were you able to make use of it despite your house not having power?
- joecool1029 9y ago
  Yes, the cable wires are below power lines and even when they get ripped down from the poles they usually keep working. EDIT: I am guessing Comcast learned after Sandy took out power for a month. We had power for a few days until the batteries died out on the nodes when Sandy hit... even with all the lines ripped down everywhere.
lilbobbytables 9y ago
Interesting. Is a power supply required for cable based internet? If not, then they certainly would need to do that in order to maintain a level of feature parity. It would be pretty annoying to have a generator running at home, but no internet (although it certainly still happens with downed wires). Or worse, you have power, but the fiber box doesn't.
- joecool1029 9y ago
  So that magical box on the pole has batteries inside. Depending on how they have it set up, you get around 24-48 hours of battery power before the fiber node converting optical to coaxial goes dead. They often have a LED on the outside showing red or green depending on status of the node. A mini generator solves the issue of powering the node if your power utility is worthless and can't restore things after a few days.

taspeotis 9y ago

The service you get from a business tier is nothing like the service you get from residential. In Australia I managed a thousand or so ADSL connections with TID [1] and the support was excellent. Telstra is much maligned in Australia, but it's not like they can't provide good service. [1] https://www.telstra.com.au/business-enterprise/solutions/network-services/connectivity/internet-services https://www.telstra.com.au/business-enterprise/solutions/net...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

deathanatos 9y ago

I also have Comcast Business, but I'd give them a 40/100. (But most of that score is because the service usually works.) > I've never had a tech try to run me through a "script", or argue that I didn't know what I was talking about when I tell them I've already done all the debugging and the problem was on their end. I've had two major outages: * One outage where IPv6 connectivity was completely lost, and IPv4 connectivity was completely unaffected. I noticed this immediately, because I don't use Comcast's DNS servers; instead I use Google's, over IPv6 exclusively, so it was immediately apparent. * One outage where IPv4 SYN packets would go unanswered, however, once answered, the connection was quite stable. IPv6 was completely unaffected. In both instances, the tech on the phone insisted that "my signal strength" was "very weak", and that they'd send a tech out to fix that right away. The representatives both time were unable to comprehend — let alone answer — my question of "how would signal strength only affect one of IPv4/v6? Do you think the copper can somehow discriminate which protocol is in use?" In the end, the representative adjusted by strength until it was supposedly awesome, and in neither case did the problem get resolved at that point, of course. It took much insisting to get them to look at their own network in the first case, and to replace my modem in the latter case. (I have no idea what went wrong in the latter case, but my guess is "something with NAT" and/or the IPv4 hardware. Regardless, replacing the modem did fix the issue.) I've also tried — and have yet to convince them of this: every single one of their black Comcast-branded modems will forget the 2 GHz WiFi WPA-PSK key on any sort of power cycle or reset, and revert back to the default, but only for the key. (All other settings, such as port forwardings or the SSID for the AP remain intact.) This, I believe, only happens if you use an actual key; if you use a password from which a key is derived, you won't be affected. They've also tried to upsell me during outages … which, really? Why do companies do that? I did at least finally get a representative that was human enough to laugh when I told them that the modem was doing the "blinken light dance". (The LEDs on the front panel go through a sequence as the device boots and acquires a connection.) > When I called to get PTR records added for my five static IPs, I would love to have this … I just didn't think I could request such a thing without the hell of trying to explain what a PTR record is.

mrbill 9y ago
I've got their "Business Wireless Gateway", a Cisco bit that really shouldn't have the Cisco name on it.. I turned off its built-in WiFi and use a Ubiquiti UAP-AC-PRO. The BWG just functions as a modem and somewhere to plug the WAN interface of my USG "router" into.

TheAceOfHearts 9y ago

I'd be very interested in reading about what you're doing with your home network, and how much you're paying for their services. When I last looked, Comcast charged around $200/mo for 250Mbps down / 20Mbps up, unlimited bandwidth, and a static IP. At the time it seemed too much, but now I pay around $150 for for 130Mbps down / 13Mbps up, unlimited bandwidth, and a dynamic IP. So I might have to give it a bit more serious consideration.

mrbill 9y ago
Public-facing email/web/etc server (that replaced my colo box), everything else is behind a NAT "router" that also uses one of the static IPs. I do some minor web hosting for friends, etc. I started out with their 27/7 plan, then for years had 50 down/10 up, but I recently talked with their retention department and managed to upgrade to 150/20 with my same five statics, for $140-150ish/month. No bandwidth caps (it's not even metered) or anything.
overcast 9y ago
Where do you live with those completely insane prices? Spectrum(TimeWarner) in New York is $60 for 100/10. Which usually pegs at 120/12 any time of the day I use it.
- mrbill 9y ago
  As the other reply said - Texas. I'm in Houston. If I lived in another part of town, I could get AT&T gigabit for $100ish a month, but my house was built in '57 and my only options for Internet right now are Comcast or (slow) AT&T DSL.
- eximius 9y ago
  I live in Texas, it has comparably bad pricing.

joncrane 9y ago

What is the price difference (in percent) between a typical residential service and a typical business service?

mrbill 9y ago
50-100% more, depending on speed and features. However, Business Class typically has no metering/caps, better support, and a faster SLA for getting things fixed (depending on your area and the type of outage).

protonfish 9y ago

My current place of employment has Comcast. We have a major outage every couple months during which all work ceases. I rely on an Internet connection for everything I do professionally so I stay away from cable because stability > speed.

theandrewbailey 9y ago
Funny story: my employer switched to Comcast business because our old DSL line went down about once a month. We've had one outage in a year, but everyone got hit by that. (this outage: https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-tiny-error-shut-off-the-internet-for-parts-of-the-us/ https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-tiny-error-shut-off-the-in... )
toxican 9y ago
Meanwhile I've had Comcast residentually for about a year now without any noticed outages. At work we've got a local ISP (who we actually do design work for!) and our internet goes down once or twice a week at least. There's really no point in saying a nationwide company is reliable or not because it's incredibly region-specific. At home I've never had connection issues, I generally get the speeds I pay for, and I've never had any billing issues. But you ask someone who lives 100 miles in any direction with Comcast and they'll have a completely different story.

dangerboysteve 9y ago

We have a few offices in the USA and the offices are connected to Comcast. I was really surprised how good they were after reading all the blog posts about how bad they were. In both locations they offered us the best service (Sip trunking and internet) at the best price. Not only that, they also had to shell out for a major build to one of our facilities without us flipping any part of the bill. When we've had problems, required changes, they were really fast and competent. I can't speak for their consumer division but I would recommend them based on my experiences.