[ale] So, Comcast says 8-16ms to their first hop is... OK?

[Jerald Sheets]

Back when I had Comcast Business, I immediately changed off their DNS servers in favor of Google.  THEN, I had an ipcop (then iffier) caching firewall/gateway in the middle to mitigate service interruptions and dropouts, etc.  I’ve always had kids at home, so I’ve never gone without some caching device I could peruse through web requests on…  a “single point of exit” that could be shut off when grounding happens, etc.

The squid internals in that sped up browsing quite a bit too….  worth a shot.


Jerald Sheets
questy at gmail.com



> On Sep 4, 2025, at 4:45 PM, Neal Rhodes via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
> 
> Thanks for the reply.   So, since you have a UDM pro, somebody, before me, setup a Custom Verification rule: 
> 
> <99402104.png>
> 
> <b2999757.png><5aea208d.png>
> 
> This might have been the company that installed security cameras.   Does this look remotely sane for Comcast?  (75.75.75.75 is Comcast DNS)  I have reverted the UDM to use the Auto SLA test to see what happens. 
> 
> So, in general I'm hearing Comcast Business still uses a shared coax in many places, and yup, it might suck getting to that first hop. 
> 
> regards, 
> 
> Neal
> 
> On 2025-09-04 16:29, Raj Wurttemberg via Ale wrote:
> 
>> We have the fault tolerant UDM Pro Max setup (main and "shadow") in our offices, and we have AT&T and Comcast.  AT&T is the primary and is always rock-solid.  I see the Comcast connection fail a few times during the week, so it is only used as a backup connection. I like it that the UDM Pro lets me know when there are internet issues.
>>  
>> I too see about the same hop times as you do on AT&T and Comcast. Looking at my UniFi console now, I see that Comcast had six "high latency" alerts today.... None for AT&T.
>>  
>> /Raj W.
>>  
>> From: Ale <ale-bounces at ale.org> on behalf of Neal Rhodes via Ale <ale at ale.org>
>> Reply-To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org>
>> Date: Thursday, September 4, 2025 at 1:08 PM
>> To: <ale at ale.org>
>> Cc: <neal at mnopltd.com>
>> Subject: [ale] So, Comcast says 8-16ms to their first hop is... OK?
>>  
>> We've been chasing why the church Unifi UDM Pro router is several times a day alerting that the Comcast Business Internet connection has gone down. 
>> 
>> I did some pathping (kinda like MTR) tests yesterday, and typical times to 8.8.8.8 from the back of the Comcast router, eliminating our local router and lan are about 16ms. 
>> 
>> Of that, 8-14ms is just the local Comcast router getting to its first hop.    
>> 
>> My AT&T Uverse is about 3ms to the first hop, and I understood that to be normal. 
>> 
>> I ping the Comcast Account manager, and here is the response:
>> 
>> Based on the findings, a lot of businesses/churches on the shared coax network in that area experience capacity issues which impacts reliability and performance.  To solve this issue, I'd suggest a complete network overhaul, which we could setup and manage.  
>> 
>> The first step would be migrating to a dedicated network.  Comcast would build out a dedicated fiber connection to the church to guarantee network uptime and speed consistency.  To guarantee wifi distribution/quality we would install a managed Meraki Device, with a new switch and Aps throughout the building. 
>> 
>> Comcast would invest $11,789.43 to run the fiber line ( no cost to the church), and the monthly cost for everything would be estimated in the 2k-2.5k per month.
>> 
>> Really?  Comcast Business Internet is that bad?  And it's ok? 
>> 
>> FYI, I have looked on what we could do to change the threshold in the Unifi router to relax the times and we can't find any such. 
>> 
>> regards, 
>> 
>>  
>> Neal  
>> 
>>  
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