Double Broadband Speed for Free

My home office is on cable broadband. First had it installed almost a decade ago and have gradually been speed upgraded through to company buyouts - Cambridge Cable to ntl to VirginMedia - during that time. But, Speedtest.net and its ilk have never shown my connection to be close to the promised download rates. Then, I had a router problem and mentioned it to the cable guy who was providing us with a new TV hookup. He tested my router, said it was fine, and told me to call Virgin to request a new modem.

Well, I did that, they sent one within two days and I’d registered my new MAC address within minutes. I am purportedly on 10 megabits per second (Mbps), but with my ancient Motorola Surfboard cable modem, I was seeing only around half that speed using Speedtest.net, 6 Mpbs max.

As you can see from the image above, with the new cable modem, I’m now up to full speed. 10 Mbps. Uploads are supposed to be at 512 Mbps and Speedtest reported 497. So here is today’s quick tip, if you have a leased modem from your cable or adsl broadband internet provider that’s more than a couple of years old, give the ISP a call and ask them for a free upgrade. They can only say no, but if they say yes, you could double your download speed like I did.

You can do your own testing on the SpeedTest site, but be sure to let us know your before and after download speeds.