Comcast has said that they have stopped their filtering. So, I started a few BitTorrent sessions to put it to the test.
The results? Not good…
Traffic ticked up much better than when the filtering was in place, my 1:1 ratio broke 384k for the first time in a long, long time. In fact, speed on BitTorrent was actually quite quick.
The problem is what happens to all my other bandwidth. Even with only a few hundred kilobits of BitTorrent traffic… it’s as if I’m at 100% bandwidth utilization. The best thing I can come up with, is that Comcast’s filtering servers are still preventing data from flowing fully… just not at a “hard cap” of limiting upload rates to a fixed speed.
I’ll do more testing with a QoS router when I can (though admittely, that won’t happen until June probably). Which reminds me… hey Apple, why in the world does AirPort Extreme not have any QoS controls? The most expensive routers shouldn’t have the least features… and I don’t see any reason why QoS shouldn’t be in the firmware settings.
With 802.11n finally panning out in terms of hardware interoperability… my testing with QoS (in June) will probably be a permanent change.