[ale] Serious: Comcast Business vs Residential

[DJ-Pfulio]

About every year a similar question comes up. I on't think anything has
changed in my area in 5+ years related to comcast internet. Check the
email-list-archives for those old posts.

I had both residential and business service from Comcast together for
about 3 months.

Residential was cheaper for more speed and TV was possible. However, the
connection VoIP would drop every Thursday afternoon for about an hour.

With business, I have to have their equipment probably due to subneting
of the static IP range.  I have a look-don't-touch login to their
router, which I treat as a bridge-gateway only.  My router grabs the
subnet and keeps comcast of my internal network. No TV allowed.

There are 2 lines to my house. 1 for residential, 1 for business.

If you want the best connection possible, get their phone service for a
month. VoIP requires much tighter specs than TV or internet, and I've
had techs spend 3 hrs trying to get it working within spec.  My internet
speeds improved greatly.  Cancel before the 30-day trial ends.

I don't know the physical connections from the box in my yard back to
the plant, but with business, I always get at least the bandwidth I pay
for. They must reserve it on the infrastructure for that to work. Not
hard with QoS today.  With residential, it is best attempt, that is clear.

So ... if you don't want to stream in the evenings when the rest of your
neighbors stream and game, get residential. Otherwise, get business and
pay the 90-120% more for service.

Your neighborhood might be different. Mine has ADSL 2+/u-verse and I can
pay comcast $$$$ and get 1Gbps service.


On 11/11/2015 10:56 AM, Dustin Strickland wrote:
> I did tier 2 residential tech support for them for a while. I have
> talked with some of the CPE engineers and business techs before; my
> understanding is that the core difference between residential and
> business class services is that with business services you're *supposed
> to* have a dedicated line from your service address to their CMTS. This
> is *supposed to* guarantee that you get the full speed that you're
> paying for all the time(whereas residential service makes use of a
> potentially shared cable) but due to their infrastructure and
> maintenance practices this may not help you out. It's like pulling teeth
> to get someone competent if your signal strength is out of DOCSIS specs,
> but at least you don't have anyone crowding up the line and exacerbating
> the problem. You also can't get TV with their business service. If
> that's important to you, don't bother, but IMO their business service is
> overpriced anyway considering the extra cost over residential is
> supposed to be a guarantee for a "priority" connection to their CMTS
> which they often can't provide. The only other benefit is no data caps.
> Residential will be fine for most cases unless you need  port 25, static
> IP's etc. The techs do not have the tools available to enable those for
> you for residential internet.
> 
> On 11/11/2015 10:33 AM, Chris Fowler wrote:
>> The family is onto me about our DSL being slow for watching Netflix.
>>  Currently, I am using Atlantic Nexus DSL.  Many years on this
>> service.  Support is great.
>>
>> I had to run up to my office last night and it was the first time in
>> almost 2 months!  I need a service that will stay up and have a SLA
>> that provides better support techs and priority.
>>
>> My neighbor has Xfinity Residential so critical thinking leads me to
>> understand that we would be sharing the same uplink and the 'Business'
>> part of my service would be in name and support only.  What I need to
>> know is if there truly is a difference in the service.  With their
>> business package I'll pay a few dollars extra and it will not be as
>> fast as his, but still much faster than my DSL!
>>