My company has about 2 dozen Comcast business cable accounts at satellite offices around the Midwest. We are looking at adding an additional ISP to the mix and we are thinking of purchasing an Ethernet circuit from Comcast in an attempt to increase performance on those connections by keeping all the traffic within Comcast's network. Comcast, of course, has assured us this will result in "noticeable" speed increases for those accounts. I am more weary. Does anyone have any experience with Comcast's ethernet offerings? How reliable are they? Do Comcast cable connections see a significant performance improvement?
Dylan Ebner, Network Engineer
Consulting Radiologists, Ltd.
1221 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis, MN 55403
ph. 612.573.2236 fax. 612.573.2250
dylan.ebner@crlmed.com<mailto:dylan.ebner@crlmed.com>
www.consultingradiologists.com<http://www.consultingradiologists.com>
We have a segment on Comcast Ethernet. We use it for other purposes,
just point to point for our needs, but it has been relatively stable.
However, we ordered 1Gbit, and we do use a full 1Gbit, for the first
few months performance was nowhere near 1Gbit until they upgraded some
equipment internally, but speeds have been stable, and reliability
good.
Note, Comcast Ethernet runs on their fiber network, which sometimes
uses aerial lines, I've heard of others having some disconnects when
poles get hit and stuff.
That's not really specific to Comcast. Aerial fiber runs are very common in many places, and have pros and cons, just like underground fiber.
jms
It will only help if the performance issues are related to the Comcast Internet peering connections, otherwise you'll see no difference if the issues are related to congestion occurring on the coax connections from the optical nodes that services each coax feed through neighborhoods and business. This is simple over-utilization that (at least in our neck of the woods) is becoming more and more a problem as Comcast saturates there networks with too many connections...there is only so much bandwidth a coax line can handle! I suspect your performance issues are related to the latter.
Bret
My company has about 2 dozen Comcast business cable accounts at satellite offices around the
Midwest. We are looking at adding an additional ISP to the mix and we are thinking of purchasing an
you are looking at an additional ISP, like multihoming your offices?
or 'you need more pipe in the offices'?
Ethernet circuit from Comcast in an attempt to increase performance on those connections by keeping
all
the traffic within Comcast's network. Comcast, of course, has assured us this will result in "noticeable"
If you bought an L2 ethernet link from 'office' to 'somewhere' why
would speed be better? The previous question I asked (clarifying
question) aims to help disambiguate this some...
o If you buy a gig link to Comcast's IP network (with IP services from
Comcast) that's one thing (then all, you hope) offices on the same
network are 'faster'. You won't be crossing any of the (potentially)
problematic isp peering links other folk have mentioned.
o If you are buying ethernet transoprt to connect the offices together
in a large vpls/mpls domain you'll probably be better off speed wise
(unless there is drastically higher latency or loss) vs the existing
links you have to comcast's IP network. (note also the VPLS/MPLS
domain doesnt' imply external connectivity, necessarily)
o If you are buying ethernet transport to link the offices to an
external peering/ISP partner/provider then whatever happens on
Comcast's IP network is immaterial (mostly) to this part of your
network.
-Chris
This is what we worry about as well. Right now, when the complaints start coming in, we can usually trace the problem to a comcast -> level3 -> qwest issue. Our big concern is we start seeing over subscription on the nodes (we have dealt with this in the past) and our problems start all over again.
Dylan Ebner, Network Engineer
Consulting Radiologists, Ltd.
1221 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis, MN 55403
ph. 612.573.2236 fax. 612.573.2250
dylan.ebner@crlmed.com
www.consultingradiologists.com