Tech Forum

Today, I got a call from a member of the FM group asking me where to put the coax cable for a ComCast connection in at my stake center. I was very surprised and upset about this change. My stake center currently is currently connected to Verizon FIOS. There has not been any issues. The last stake conference we did with webcasting was one of the best we have had. Now they are changing my Internet connection and I don't like it.

The reason is that I don't have any confidence in ComCast to deliver the performance that FIOS did. Also, I'm concerned with the upload bandwidth being adequate to handle webcasting traffic.

It is my understanding that Salk Lake has made the choice to consolidate all payment of Internet connection to the ComCast National account, which means that the FM groups will no longer be paying for the internet connections. I can see this being a good thing, but at the same time, I don't have any confidence in ComCast being able to deliver the level of service that FIOS does.

If you are using ComCast for webcasting, I have a couple of questions:

1. what is your upload speed?
2. how has your experience been when using ComCast for webcasting.

I don't have any confidence in ComCast to do webcasting.

when I started webcasting we were using Comcast. The upload speed will be determined by which plan you are on. If I remember right, we had 7Mb/s UL, which was fine for webcasting, so long as you turned off WiFi access during conference.

As far as stability, they were pretty darned consistent in giving us the full UL/DL speeds stated in their plan. The majority of our problems was with the DSL connections at the receiving buildings. Unlike Comcast, they were always having a hard time with DL consistency.

Thank Mikerowaved. I always turn the WIFI off for any broadcast. I hope that consistency will be there because I have never had an issue with FIOS. So time will tell.

I didn't know they were doing that. If that is the case, then if would effect my stake also. We can get Comcast in our area, but our buildings are not trenched for it. This will be interesting to see what they do.

rannthal, I also got the impression that it was only a pilot program and my stake is one of them that is participating in it. I will move forward because I have no choice in the matter and I got to work with what is provided. I hope that my trust in Comcast will be improved, but based on the underlying connection for the last mile, I do not expect my trust and confidence in them to go up.

I'm rather surprised that anywhere that the National Account works, that it wasn't mandated... meaning I don't know how you got away with having Verizon this long.

As for the webcasts, I did dozens of them with an upload speed of 1.5Mbps - Maybe it didn't deliver HD content, widescreen, and 7 tracks of audio, so I guess it depends on what you've decided is a quality webcast (beyond the definition from the Church).

You'll be fine, just like the hundreds of others that do it without Verizon.

My experience with Comcast business internet has been much better than my FIOS experience was. With the recent switch over at one of my receiving buildings, I finally feel confident of doing a webcast that will not drop out or stop working completely. That along with the Teradek solution, I am feeling pretty good at having a successful webcast this coming weekend.

If this contract means that ComCast will work harder to connect the outlying buildings, that's a net gain for me. I've got one building on 3Mbit DSL, another on 4G. Both are near residential and commercial buildings. Not exactly the boonies, but we just can't get from there to here.

I had another building that had DSL (where it appeared to be just out range for Comcast) but my FM group was able to get Comcast Business in place. So much better for webcasting.

carsonm, I'm sorry that your experience with FIOS wasn't as good as you expected. I have had FIOS at my home for the last 4 or 5 years and I have never had an issue with it and at my stake center, I never had an issue with it. Now the way that I have both of my connection setup is that I come out of the ONT using Cat5e or better network cable and I have it plugged directly into the Cisco router at the stake center and in my own router at home. I do not use the Actiontec as my main router. At home, I only use it for MOCA. I know that when I first got FIOS, I was having internet issues where my speed would not go above 20 megabits/sec. I switched to ethernet and then I was able to work with the techs and plug my home computer directly into the ONT and discovered that I had a bad router. If I remained on coax, I would have never been able to determine that.

BTW, not to toot my own horn too loudly, I'm a network engineer by trade and I understand how technology works and personally, a switched network (FIOS) is better than a shared service like Comcast.

Terry