Well after many years of great service from Comcast Cable, and paying extra for that powerboost... I was averaging 28K down, 3K up.... but the last couple of weeks have been really slow... I called Comcast and the guy tells me their is no problem, you get 8K down and 1K up... obviously that must be too slow for broadband and gaming, since I've been lagging games like crazy lately... so what are other Options in Broadband, their is no other cable company here... I heard DSL was Broadband but not great for gaming, same with satilitte... options?

Mbps, not Kbps.
I think you're best off staying. Might check with your neighbors though. If there has been a lot of construction and people moving in or switching to cable that can make the difference. It's pretty much impossible to know what your true speeds are with Comcast. The Powerboost is only temorary and depends on available bandwidth in your area. You benefit from extra bandwidth, but it's only for a few MB's of data. It's a boost, not a continuous fast speed. Speedtest sites just won't give you a true figure for this since they only send a few packets.
DSL adds another router to the mix and it's still all going across the same infrastructure in the end.
Comcast is rolling out faster service as well, the package you and I are on will be seeing faster speeds over the next year or so.

Regardless, what you have is plenty for gaming and hosting. Bandwidth isn't your issue.


Check this, it could help a lot:

Go to your router and check the DNS servers. Compare to the list of servers here, the "domain helper" dns server list:
http://dns.comcast.net/dns-ip-addresses.php

A few months ago, comcast switched customers to dns servers to monitor your habits for advertising purposes. When you put in a bad url, it goes to an advertising based error screen now. You can OPT OUT of this, which should help you out.

You can opt out 2 ways:
1)go to your account webpage and find the opt out. I have not done this, I used method 2.

2)The other (better) way, which is what I did when I first heard about this, is to manually change the DNS servers you use in your router.
Look at that server list I posted and find where your dns server is located. Then go to the link here to the opt out dns server list:
http://dns.comcast.net/dns-ip-addresses2.php

Go to the dns server list in your router and manually change the primary and secondary to the ones on the OPT OUT list.
This is legitimate, and the servers are staying at those addresses. You do not want the "domain helper" dns servers.
Alternatively, you could use a 3rd party set of dns servers, which your router may already have listed as an option, but the opt out servers at comcast do a great job.

I'm betting this will help you out.


Another thing:
If you have not enabled QoS (quality of service) for your 360 and pc, then do so. You may be able to put in a MAC address, but you may have to assign a static IP and put that IP address in there. Set the device to High. This tells the router to maintain bandwidth for the device(s) you see as most important. So if your wife has a laptop that she's on while you're gaming, you want your 360/pc to have priority. It's the marriage saver.
Especially important if you host, but also advisable for gaming in general. If you have VOIP, your phone is likely of highest priority and should stay that way, so you don't lose voice quality. It's a good tool to use, but it's only for your LAN, doesn't change anything for issues outside of your gateway.

DSL is fine for gaming but technically I prefer cable, easier to set up.

If you are lagging, it means your ping is bad (time it takes for a transmitted data to reach target) not the bandwidth (amount of data).

8k/1k is fine for gaming.

What you want to do is find the IP adress of your target server

then go start-run type CMD there (to get the little dos-window)

type "ping 192.168.0.100" there (where the numbers are the IP number of your server)

You will see a ping return in milli seconds. Let us know how that turns out.

Could be packet loss, that's the worst offender for lag.

You can have a ping of 30 but with any packet loss you'll still lag.

add the -n switch to what RSC said above and set it to 50 and see if you get all 50 returned.

example: ping -n 50 192.168.1.1

I have Comcast and no issues.

thx you all...but all that talk is WAY over my head... go into my router... lol... what break it open? JK... I understand go into the settings, but I don't know where or how to... enable quality control, again...got to research and learn that stuff... and no time now... there are new houses in my community, alot... but I was getting 20K download and 8K up steady for years... all of a sudden I got crap for a connection... well anyway, I still have no problem with PC games, it's just the wireless connections... so I hooked it up to a CAT cable now, a lot faster then wireless.

thx again.

cool...but bad for me:




oh, I went to LA... heres a close one like yours, lol:



still slow as hell.

Is your wireless network secure ? could have had many other users sucking up your bandwidth ?
My speed reading was off my Cat5 hooked into my Dell XPS 700. I just bought a new Belkin Wireless +N
router. What a difference in speed on my notebook now.

If it's just wireless, have you moved anything around in the house? New microwave or anything like that? You can get interference from a lot of items you might not expect. Is it possible to move the 360 to a tv closer to the router, preferably in direct line of sight to test again? If it tests fine wired, then it's either interference, a settings issue or like Jim mentioned, a neighbor on your network. They may not even know they're on your network, some people just connect to whatever they can. If you didn't change your SSID (name) of your wireless connection, it could just be "Linksys" like 10 neighbors may also use.

Basic wireless security is not hard, but you don't want to go into it before eliminating other possible causes first.

Is your router close to the floor? Can you raise it any? The higher off the floor the better.

it is 8 feet directly from each other... and those times were with my hardwired connection...so it's something with my provider I think.