Comcast in Chicago, a little help please

[steve2470]

Usually I would post this in Computer Help and Support, but it's not that terribly geeky.

I watch this guy stream PUBG on twitch.tv. Part of his job, of course, is to make sure his stream does not buffer excessively or have frozen frames, in other words a normal video viewing experience. He lives in the city of Chicago, not a suburb.

He has Comcast. I don't know what kind of account he has. Lately he has been having terrible problems with buffering and the stream literally locking up or showing maybe one frame per second. He says there's "nothing I can do".

If he had Business Comcast, would that make a difference ? I was reading on their site that there are no data caps. I am assuming an ordinary residential account in Chicago would have a data cap. Maybe they are throttling him because he does not have a business account ? He streams in the neighborhood of 50 hours per week or around 200 hours per month, so he must be using a lot of data.

Is he really out of luck, or does he need to bite the bullet and go business Comcast ? I know Comcast has a pretty terrible reputation but according to him, it's his only option. Thank you all.

[Jokerman]

1. Many, many variables at work here.

First suggestion is for him to use speedtest.net or fast.com to verify that he is getting the speed he is paying for.

Some personal accounts, particularly cable broadband that comcast often uses may have a slower upload speed than download which works fine for web browsing or video download but not if you are uploading video from that location.

I don't know much about twitch.tv but if he is streaming video from his location there may or may not be additional bandwidth needed for each viewer stream. speedtest.net is best for this as it shows upload and download results separately.