Hello everyone,
I have run into this situation twice in the past week:
Both people had signed up for Comcasts XFINITY Extreme 50 High Speed Internet (50 Mbps download speed), but neither were getting the promised speeds. In fact they were only getting about half (24 Mbps) of what they were paying Comcast for. What was going on here? Was it Comcast again?
Actually no! I found out that two essential things were missing from each persons network setup:
1) The Modem: If your Comcast connection rate is 20 Mbps or greater your modem should be a DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem. Once again, you must use a DOCSIS 3.0 Modem in order to take full advantage of Comcast’s fast Internet speeds! You can rent one from Comcast or buy your own. I recommend buying your own.
2) The Router: Your router must have both LAN and WAN Gigabit functionality. The WAN Ethernet 10/100/1000 Gigabit ports are for establishing a wired connection to your broadband Ethernet-enabled DOCSIS 3.0 modem. The LAN Gigabit Ethernet ports are for establishing high-speed wired connections to your desktop PC. Once again, connect the router to the cable modem through a Gigabit WAN port, and connect your other PCs, servers, wireless-N access points, or anything else to the LAN Gigabit Ethernet Ports.
Once the DOCSIS 3.0 Modem and the Gigabit Router were hooked up, download speeds of over 50Mbps came flowing in!
Professor Randy says: Don’t buy a router that doesn’t have both LAN and WAN Gigabit ports, and don’t expect extreme Comcast download speeds without a DOCSIS 3.0 Modem!
2:19 pm on March 8th, 2012 1
A hearty AMEN to the point about the DOCSIS modem, Professor! I recently swapped out my old circa-2001 cable modem (probably a DOCSIS 1.0 vintage) for a DOCSIS 3.0 and my Internet speed went from about 10Mbps to just over 20Mbps. It also seems like the new modem is not as affected by the evening prime-time TV and Internet “rush hour”, slipping back only to around 15Mbps. The old modem used to drop severely at times to below 1Mbps!
9:36 am on July 1st, 2012 2
Also a point of failure could be the protocol between the router and the computer. For instance, I’ve been using a cheap wireless adapter and getting speeds about 15mbps down. Once I switched over to Fast Ethernet (cat5e), I’m getting 61mbps down. BIG difference.
3:04 pm on July 8th, 2012 3
Thanks for the comment Stephen,
You are so right! Wired will always be faster than wireless.
I recommend Cat5e for 100mbit networks and Cat6 for gigabit networks.
To fully take advantage of Cat6, you need all gigabit hardware (NICs) and a gigabit Switch (or gigabit ports in the router). If not, your Cat6 will just get you Cat5 speeds.
Best wishes and thanks for visiting my blog.
12:16 pm on March 2nd, 2013 4
I was going around in circles trying to find out if my 7 year old router was the reason my wireless speeds were half the speed of my ethernet speeds. That is, until I read your very helpful article. My modem is docsis 3.0 – I picked it up a few months ago when I upgraded my comcast service – so all good there. Did some more searching to check my router specs and sure enough, no gigabit wan/lan functionality. I figured it was my old router but wasn’t sure why. Thanks again!
12:25 pm on March 2nd, 2013 5
Hello Jon T,
Thanks for the comment. There is nothing more frustrating than slow wireless speeds! I see this problem all the time with my Comcast clients. I’m glad that the information in my post was helpful. Thanks for reading and commenting.
Best wishes,
Randy Knowles
12:46 am on April 10th, 2013 6
Hi Randy…
Quick question: Wouldn’t a router with up to 100Mb speeds be sufficient?
12:59 pm on April 10th, 2013 7
Thanks for the comment Scot,
It’s important to remember that, though a router has a 100 Mbit/s Ethernet port, it DOES NOT mean it can actually route traffic at 100 Mbit/s. Old Cisco 2620/2621 routers had 1 or 2 10/100 Fast Ethernet ports, but you were lucky to push 20 Mbit/s through them.
Many so called 100Mbit ports on a modem actually can’t handle more than 35Mbit in traffic (speedtest throughput). Many modem specs are in error.
These faster broadband services are going to expose a lot of existing modem and router bottlenecks. Anybody getting new equipment should definitely go gigabit all the way (LAN and WAN).
Best wishes,
Randy Knowles
9:16 pm on May 8th, 2013 8
Quick question on the wireless aspect. While I expect it to be slower, I would not expect that slow. I am getting over 50Mbps over the ethernet but my wireless is only 10Mbps or so. I have a netgear WNDR 3300 router. I know its a bit older but I would expect to be getting closer to at least 15-20. I have played around with channels and other things to no avail.