Comcast lately has been running ads for a new service called Blast, which offers a considerable improvement in both upload and download speeds. After checking with them, I confirmed that I had the 6 megabit down/384kbit up package, and could get blast, 16 megabits down and 2 megabits up, for $10 more. So I gave it a try.

Well, it is definitely all that and a bag of chips. Look at my benchmarks against both a San Francisco and New York targets, using dslreports.com to benchmark it.

Web pages don't load in pieces like they used to, they pop up on a full screen as though I had loaded an application. Even a Flash-heavy monster like IGN.com pops up fully rendered.

The upload speed is respectable as well, although I doubt that will put an end to these foolish class action suits by spoiled net users who think they have a constitutional right to steal and Comcast must provide it. Unless these clowns have been uploading Linux ISOs and Grateful Dead concert recordings, they are probably downloading something they shouldn't via BitTorrent, and I hope Comcast enters everything they downloaded into evidence during discovery.

But I suppose with laughable defenses like this, I'm swimming upstream. Right, sending out BitTorrents makes you a virus. No, it makes you a bandwidth pig. I'm no great fan of Comcast. It has done more than a few things wrong in this whole incident, but it seems the other side will continue to categorically ignore the issue of upload speeds, network congestion and shared bandwidth, to say nothing of what exactly they are sharing, so I find myself defending the company if only for the sake of intellectual honesty.