How to test if Comcast is throttling Netflix and Youtube and how to stop it
Comcast ? a world leading telecommunications company, has admitted to throttling their users internet speeds in the past. Actually they have been doing so since 2008, but only in 2018 they have admitted it and made a promise to stop.
Sounds great, but is it actually true? If it was we wouldn?t see so many comments from users themselves about Comcast throttling your internet. In particular, Comcast mostly loves to throttle Netflix, Youtube and Torrents.
Before jumping into complaining about throttling we need to be sure that it is the truth.
And if you want a quick guide how to bypass throttling (if you for sure know that you encounter Comcast throttling) here it is ? set up Surfshark VPN and Comcast will stop throttling your internet connection.
What is Throttling
ISP throttling is intentional speed reduction (placing bandwidth caps) put by your internet service provider in this case ? Comcast. This is done by your ISP usually for a few reasons:
- Reduce traffic amount from servers at a specific time of the day
- Earn money by prioritizing some websites who pay them
- Reduce the load time of certain websites to forward the traffic to their own channel
How to tell if Comcast throttles Youtube, Netflix and other bandwidth
Netflix, Youtube, Skype, Torrents are usually most likely to be throttled, since they are bandwidth heavy platforms. Of course there can be issues from the platforms side that we can mix up with throttling, but there are ways to find out what is what.
Test Your Internet Speed
There are many speed test tools online that are absolutely free to use for everyone, for example Speedtest. Simply use the speed test tool to get insights about your internet performance.
If the results you get from speed tests are drastically different from the ones that are promised for you by your ISP ? congratulations your internet provider might be throttling you.
Wehe App to test your apps
A group of researchers at Northeastern University created a tool called Wehe which helps you test if your ISP is throttling such popular apps as Youtube, Netflix, Spotify and others. It compares the speed you get with the apps that might be throttled with other apps on your devices.
Internet Health test
Internet Health Test tool checks your connection outside of your ISP network, which helps to determine if there are blockage points between different networks designed to slow down your connection. Basically you will gain insights of how consistent your internet connection speed is.
How to Stop Comcast Throttling Netflix, Youtube and other platforms
After you conduct the test to see if you encounter ISP throttling and you do see that this is true the best way to bypass it is by using a VPN. VPN encrypts your internet traffic and makes it run through their servers. When your traffic is encrypted nobody can see what you are doing online, not even your ISP. Which means that ISP won?t be able to tell what sites are you using and throttle you.
https://surfshark.com/blog/am-i-being-throttled
Everything is very simple. You just need to get yourself a decent VPN like Surfshark which will do all the work for you. Get the VPN, connect to any servers (you can choose the recommended ones) and just go stream Netflix, enjoy Youtube videos or download those torrents with your usual internet speed without throttling. You will be anonymous, invisible and untouchable.
Just make sure you get a decent VPN (once again I personally recommend Surfshark) since not all VPNs do work with such platforms as Netflix and not all VPNs do offer absolute anonymity. Don?t even try to go with the free VPNs since they collect their users? logs.
