as far as your download speeds being so limited....hmmm....let's wait for more competent people than I. Are you on ethernet or wireless ?

Are other people downloading a lot while you are testing your speed ?

I guess the main point is, how fast a speed do you want or need ? If you need 105 mbps, then, yes, you need a new cable modem.

If not, then you can stay with the old one.

1) I'm on wireless. I plan to check an Ethernet connection to see if there's any difference.

2) Even when I'm the only person on line, the speed doesn't seem to get above 10 Mbps; when my wife is also online, it's even slower.

3) I'd love a speed of 105 Mbps, but my question is whether I can achieve it; after all, even with the current modem I should be getting speeds of 30+ Mbps, and I'm not even getting close -- and I don't know why. That's the problem I'm hoping to isolate.

I don't know if Comcast where you live would come and check, but you can do a visual inspection for aged cable, suspicious looking couplings or splitters, tree limbs on the line, etc., and then call them.

All that is outside the house falls on them to maintain.

I guarantee you, 100%, your speeds on Ethernet will be much much faster than wireless.

I'd call Comcast and have them thoroughly check absolutely everything. You're paying for good service, demand it.

Good luck.

It won't cost any money to compare speeds between the wireless connection and a hardwired connection to it-- that could be a part of isolating the problem.

Do all the computers hit the same low speed settings? They should if they aren't the problem.

This leaves you with three possible problems: modem, router, or something with Comcast or the lines.

It's a pain, but you could go buy a combo DOCSIS 3.0 router modem and if it doesn't fix the problem then return it.

This might be $50 more than a modem or router only, but would certainly bring everything together.

Or, you could buy a modem only and again see if that solves the problem and return it if it doesn't and then exchange if for the combo.

Just to save on time and frustration, I'd be inclined to buy a combo unit.

Good luck!

http://my.verizon.com/services/speedoptimizer/FIOS/

I hope you get solutions to your slow speed soon.

As a Verizon customer in New England, I get download speeds of 30.5 Mbps consistently on my wireless laptop with the Verizon speed test. Upload speeds around 25 Mbps.

We can watch two different movies on two computers at once on Netflix or other source.

We have no problem.

get this utility:

http://www.techspot.com/downloads/5936-inssider.html

Run it from a PC that has a wireless network adapter. Ignore your SSID and find a channel that has very few other SSIDs. If you and your neighbors are on channel 6... you are sharing the effective bandwidth (assuming 2 GHz band 802.11 b/g/n).

If you can, switch over to the 5 GHz band (802.11 a/n) if you clients and router support dual band.

If you are buying a new DOCSIS 3.0 bridge/modem, consider getting a combination modem/router that supports dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n with the option for 20 & 40 MHz High Throughput (HT).

If you are streaming video in HD... do it over a cable. HD and SuperHD can suck up a lot of your channel bandwidth.

Certainly run a speed test over a wired Ethernet cable and compare it to your WiFi test results. They should not be drastically different. If your performance still sucks over wired, check all of your cable connections and if there are any kinks in any of the coax wires. if you added any splitters, those act like noise antennas and that noise gets injected into your entire coax system. Have your provider come out and test your line for noise. They can add filters on any legs that can cause problems with signal quality to/from your modem.

I replaced our modem and router with and upgraded modem/router; this indeed seemed to help with everything except my wife's computer. After much experimentation, we narrowed the problem to her wireless card; we replaced that this weekend, and everything seems hunky-dory. Thanks again!