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Comcast Cable Modem - Bandwidth vs Speed?

This morning I upgraded my Comcast cable modem service to the 8 megabit down, 768 up. I am getting that in upload speed, but all of my download tests are showing about 4.5 megabit down..

I called up support, and they tell me that Comcast does offer actual 8 megabit download speed, but 8 megabit “bandwidth”. Which, well, seems odd to me (having worked at Excite@Home for two years).

Is this true? If I download two files, I will get 8 megabits per second download, but if I download one big file (say xcode from Apple’s servers) I won’t get more than 4 megbits per second?

Now you know why I am anxiously awaiting FIOS. Comcast is a horrible company, full of lies. I’ve had the 6 for 10 months now, never seen above 5 and avg 3-4.

I do can’t wait to stop giving them my cash.

It’s hard because it seems that comcast is the only game in town, what is FIOS??? For me it’s really up speed that matters for gaming, or at least that’s the hindering factor. Good day all

Ya, good point Jim.. FIOS is Verizon’s fiber to the door, 15 megabit down and 2 megabit up, for the same price as cable.

How long until this Fios thing is available??

Comcast has placed governors on the bandwidth coming to your house. If you exeed the download speed limit for more than fifteen minutes, they bring down your internet access speed to a snails pace, school zone speed. T^his may last for hours or days. Did they think about modern homes that have wireless routers with multiple people on line at the same time ? Hmmmm, imagine that. I have four people in the house that need to use the internet at the same time. How are we suppose to know when we are exceeding the download capacity speed limit? After enough people get access to and switch over to FIOS, then Comcast will change thier tune. Until then, Comcast will behave much like the We don’t give a F^%$ Bush administration.