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His Internet was too slow. So he set up a [Raspberry Pi] robot to pester Comcast about it

I don't know why this guy dedicated a Pi for this job, but it apparently got Comcrap's attention! Lol

Many of us have grappled with slow Internet speeds at one time or another. Maybe you've even called your Internet provider about it. But you probably haven't gone to the lengths that this Comcast subscriber has.

A Washington, D.C.-based Reddit user going by the name AlekseyP was so frustrated with his download speeds that he set up a Twitter bot that tweets at Comcast every time his Internet service drops below a certain threshold. How does he do it? With a Raspberry Pi -- a small, low-power computer beloved by hobbyists -- that continuously monitors his home bandwidth.

AlekseyP pays for 150 Mbps download speeds. But, he said, he often gets just 10 to 30 Mbps -- a fraction of the advertised speed. So whenever his download rate drops below 50 Mbps, AlekseyP's Raspberry Pi sends a message prodding Comcast about it:

"Hey @Comcast why is my internet speed 31down\9up when I pay for

150down\10up in Washington DC? @ComcastCares @xfinity #Comcast #speediest"

" Hey @Comcast why is my internet speed 29down\8up when I pay for

150down\10up in Washington DC? @ComcastCares @xfinity #Comcast #speediest

-- AComcast User (@A_Comcast_User) January 29, 2016"

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Reply to
G. Morgan
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That's like a person living in London complaining that the speed limit is

30 mph but during the rush hour it takes him an hour to drive the 3 miles to his work. :-)

Alan

--
alan.dawes@argonet.co.uk 
alan.dawes@riscos.org 
Using an ARMX6
Reply to
Alan Dawes

A bicycle will improve his download speed?

Reply to
Rob Morley

Not really. There will be times when the London driver can actually drive at 30 mph. However, if Comcast is like the typical UK broadband seller, there will never be a time when your connection operates at the advertised 'up to Xmbit/sec' speed. That is really a form of false advertising. When the condition of the line and/or distance from the exchange don't allow a connection to reach the advertised up-to speed, it would be far more honest to charge for the achievable speed. After all, its not as if they can't predict what that speed will be before supplying the service.

--
martin@   | Martin Gregorie 
gregorie. | Essex, UK 
org       |
Reply to
Martin Gregorie

I thought ComCast was a cable company not DSL so issues like line length and crosstalk that plague fast DSL connections shouldn't occur. i.e. you should get the advertised speeds with cable. In my case my cable provider is the dominent provider for several hundred houses as the nearest phone exchange is 5 to 6kms from here and so DSL is a bit pish to be honest. The fastest DSL connection in my road is 2mbps. My cable connection measures at 12mbps up and 210mbps down. I get seldom get less than 200mbps.

The other thing many people fail to check is their router is up to snuff. I bought an 802.11ac router at Christmas, not for the faster wireless but to have 1Gbps LAN / WAN ports and to have enough grunt CPU power to be able to route, firewall and NAT 200mbps and faster connections. There's a lot of gutless routers out there slowing down fast connections.

Reply to
mm0fmf

I would guess he does get the advertised speed from his house to his provider, but his ISP is just overselling its connection to the internet (backbone)

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I would really like to complain about my 802.11g connection being too slow for my internet connection. We got a fiber to the university that limits 30/30 and costs a fortune. For ~25 people. The upstream is nice though :)

Reply to
Stefan Enzinger

I'm in the rather strange situation that my BT Broadband which, last year BT said could only give up to 6Mbps download speed and now on their broadband availability checker says up to 7.5 Mbps (Ilford Central Cabinet

3) is regularly giving 11 Mbps. I've just checked and at the moment I'm actually getting a download speed of 10.5Mbps (with a line rate of 12.2Mbps) which using the driving analogy is like speeding at 42 mph in a 30mph limit area.

The annoying thing is that BT put in fibre to the poles down my road some years ago using a government grant but has never put the necessary connectors at the top! The excuse is that it is not financially viable as there are no commercial premises in the road and all their resources are going to connect all the new buildings going up in the town centre!

Alan

--
alan.dawes@argonet.co.uk 
alan.dawes@riscos.org 
Using an ARMX6
Reply to
Alan Dawes

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