Time to upgrade the cable modem
I’ve been happily using my Motorola SB4100 cable modem for several years. It never entered my mind that cable modems, like all technology, slowly advances. Comcast bought my local provider (Adelphia) and said that my internet surfing would go faster because of “Power Boost”. I never saw any evidence of this until my cable repair guy mentioned that I should upgrade my modem. On my SB4100 I was getting 6-8Mbs download and 384Kbs up. I purchased a Motorola SB5101 (which isn’t exactly new) and retested. The new modem gets up to 16Mbs down and 1.5Mbs up. The “Power Boost” effect is apparently that the Comcast connection buffers the first megabyte or so of data to speed up “smaller” files. Large downloads or uploads settle back to a more reasonable 6-8Mbps down and 500Kbs up.
