Comcast provides the fastest most reliable internet service in our area, which sucks.

Our home is a veritable hot spot of internet usage. Sometimes we are downloading a game on our desktops while playing another game on our laptops and using our phones to check movie times or to map out a route to someplace new.

Between streaming movies and videos from one computer to another within our network, torrenting movies, music and games from the internet, playing online games on our computers and Playstation4, checking email,  and just general web browsing we use the internet for just about everything.

We are loyal Comcast customers. But not because we have any real choice. Satellite internet has way too much latency for serious gamers. And AT&T, Comcast's only real competition in the area has much slower service. When AT&T offered 20MB service Comcast offered 50. With AT&T recently offering 50 Comcast upgraded all their 50MB customers to their new 105MB service.

And it really is blazing fast. Sorta. Sometimes. With a wired connection the speeds are often close to 100MB. There are two problems with that statement. One is the word often. It isn't consistent. It's good say maybe 30% of the time. They don't promise any specific speed, just up to 105MB. And two who wants to be stuck in one place all the time? Wireless is the way of the future. They will not guarantee and in fact will not troubleshoot wireless speeds at all.

In fairness Comcast almost never has an outage in our area. They have better than 99% up time. That means they average less than 14 minutes of downtime every day. When they do have an outage it's usually fixed within an hour or less. And there's probably about one every other month or so.

But, we have been having a problem for over a year now that they have failed to be able to do anything about. We have an intermittent issue. It comes and goes. When it shows up we get lag in whatever games, streaming or web browsing that we are doing and we start losing about a third or more of the packets being sent out. It seems to be more of an issue with the upload speed at the time than download speed, but often both are affected.

We have switched out every physical component in our network and we still have this issue. New routers, new cable modems, new splitters, new video cards, you name it we've swapped it. It happens on every one of the over a dozen computers in the house. So it is not a specific setting on a specific computer that is causing the issue. And the same computers do not have this issue when connected to other networks. It is only with the signal we are getting from Comcast that there is an issue.

Each time they promise to send out a technician and each time they do, eventually. About two out of every three of the appointments that we make get cancelled for no specific reason, without them saying a word to us about it being cancelled. We only find out about it after setting time aside to be home for the technician who never ends up showing up. The best part, is Comcast even calls us to tell us that the technician will be coming by shortly on the day of the appointment, and then he or she never does.

Then when we call in to find out why the tech never showed up and what we need to do in order to get one to come out, invariably the rep on the phone asks us to hold while they find out if there will be a charge for sending a technician out to our home.

When a tech does finally come out they say something that contradicts what the last two or three techs to come out have said. They always want to replace some part that they don't have with them and need to set up another appointment. And then...that tech doesn't show up for the appointment and we get to start the whole dance all over.

It's too bad that Comcast provides the fastest most reliable service in our area. Because at this point if I heard that Hitler and Genghis Khan were alive and well and had teamed up to sell internet service that was as fast and as reliable as Comcast, I'd jump ship and go with whatever it is they were offering.