Internet Speed Test Results... total ** now?

Your image is from speedtest.net, one of the more highly regarded and reliable connection performance testing sites. The host you choose can somewhat impact your rating, but the percentage variation should be minimal making any difference in the outcome almost immaterial. Personally, I would trust that you're getting ~300Mbps.

To take what Da Wiz said one step further, your performance can also be impacted by how Xfinity has laid out their broadband service in your area. You don't have a switched port - a dedicated line serving only your house - it's a shared bandwidth setup. Effectively that means if you run the test at 12:00pm on a weekend you might see a much reduced throughput to running the test at 12:00am on a Tuesday. The cable company has X amount of bandwidth in your area and it's shared by everyone, the more people logged in doing things the less capacity there is to go around.

Xfinity may also be throttling (limiting) the amount of bandwidth a certain type of traffic can use, in essence creating an artificial bottleneck. TV is their bread and butter, people streaming are not using the service that makes Xfinity rich. I don't know if that's the case here, but it is certainly a possibility.

The Internet is a complex and varied thing. Your Speedtest if between you and Comcast, so that leg is fast. But then there will be hundreds of pieces of equipment between Comcast and the hard drive that holds the program. So many opportunities for bottlenecks.

It could be deliberate “throttling” of certain originating IP addresses (like Netflix), but that is a lot of work and nobody wants to do work. More likely there is a capacity problem somewhere between the source file and you. It’s a long way!

Now, it might be possible to find a Speedtest host near Netflix or do a TraceRoute to see where the bottlenecks are, but since there is nothing you can do about it….

BTW, Comcast hosts the Speedtest server on their local connection just so that you get high numbers on the part you are paying for.

Da Wiz said:

You only have 302 Mbps if you are the only one using the internet connection in your home or apartment. If anybody else is using the connection at the same time, you will have more limited bandwidth available for your connection. If the same TV program was started at the same time on 2 computers, both on your internet connection, each stream would have 150 Mbps... still enough for 1080p on both TVs. But if you are downloading something at 259 Mbps you'll have a glitchy 480p feet with the leftover 40 Mbps of bandwidth that's left for streaming. There could also be a setting in your app or streaming software that is forcing content to require less data rather than having it set to "best quality". Set the bandwidth higher to get better resolution.

Click to expand...

Normally I take your posts as practically gospel. I bought an Auro3D capable receiver based on your comments. And you have convinced me that a projector is a huge waste of money. However, you seem to be off on bitrate. A dedicated ten Mbps, as in DSL, is sufficient for HD (1080p 24 or 1080i 60fps) quality if that's the only thing you're doing. Streaming, like satellite and cable, is highly compressed. An HD Blu-ray with less compression will normally be below 30Mbps for the video stream, at least according to what it shows when I press the 'display' button on the BD player remote control. Btw, that's why I also think it's a tragedy that Netflix is dropping disc rental by mail, not to mention the probably **** sound track with streaming. A quick internet search says 3.5 to 9 Mbps is sufficient for HD. You need more for 4K, about 25Mbps. But that's still a lot lower than the 40Mbps you claim will only give you glitchy 480p on two TVs. Sure, the standard for HDMI 2.1 is 48Gbps, but that's for a fully uncompressed 8k data stream.

Which says that the original problem is probably upstream of the ISP.