Pieter Huiberts

good one Google the spelling of my name, that should also explain...

On a serious note, I downgraded to Comcast Performance (max of 25Mbps down) and streaming is of the same quality, seemingly no loss/gain of performance. It is friendlier on my wallet though

Where are you at? There are a lot of routes on the east coast that are congested right now due to Hurricane / Superstorm Sandy. Routes that may be along the way to your routing to the west coast. Think of it this way, infrastructure gets destroyed... the remaining traffic gets rerouted to the remaining pipes... those pipes then become congested because of all the extra traffic. I've been getting a lot of emails from people since the storm and most of them already suspected the storm had something to do with it. You might fall into that category. This is a reason that TMN is a great way to test your Internet speed. Your being tested outside of your providers network, which puts important factors like your route into the equation. If you simply took Comcast's word for it you might think that it was just the websites you visited... Well, the datacenters I host at are running business as usual. And trust me, I host purposely in popular net hubs... So if your speed is effected here... other sites you visit will be effected as well, as you said, you can feel that your speed isn't right.

They'll try to blame it on you... They'll try to blame it on me... They'll try to blame it on the sites you visit. But most likely, your hitting a bottleneck along the way that's probably caused by too many people having to be forced down a pipeline that can't handle that much traffic. Just know that according to all the consumer feedback flooding my inbox since the disaster... you're not alone. Comcast however is most likely still delivering on their promise... But the pipes along the route, some of them being peers of Comcast, aren't. But A LOT was destroyed. If that's the case, it's beyond their control until infrastructure is repaired.