SamKnows Broadband Study Trial

I think this is an interesting concept and plan to volunteer for this, but I than started going over the requirements. I'm curious as to how 30GB of usage in a month constitutes high usage? I mean, especially for businesses that's nothing. I don't see how 30GB of usage is going to stop a device which is designed to only run during low network usage and run for 60 days from getting "accurate" results. 

It really just seems like the scale is tipped to test an unused connection for two months. Which is your internet generally works you're almost guarantee to get great results. 

http://signup.samknows.com/comcast/requirements

Kraze, I was about to click "sign me up" and came to the same conclusion.  I have customers with Comcast business all over the Minneapolis area.  ALL of them greatly exceed 30GB of useage.  Most/all of them generate more than that just in offsite backups in a month, much less general use.

If a Comcast business user is generating <30GB month, then they are probably doing something wrong!

i wasl ready to sign up for this too, then saw that requirement. I would think that, if anything, they would WANT to test on a heavily used connection, to see how the connection handles mass congestion...

interesting.

Does anyone know if the SamKnows device supports multiple static IPv4 addresses or only a sinlge dynamic address?

I have 5 statics and I was sent the email asking if I wanted to sign up, so I think it supports all configurations.

I don't think it would matter much since it's a separate box that plugins into the modem. It's likely just bind to one of them without issue.

Hello Bitblaster,

Thank you for clarifying this question for us, we appreciate it!

And if you don’t mind please share your insight of this test with the community.

Thank you

Just an update on the SamKnows study, we appreciate the feedback and as a result of the conversations here in the forum the team organizing the study decided to remove the recommendation for the 30GB per month usage threshold. We'd encourage any and all of our customers interested in the study to participate.

-Alan

Thanks for the news Comcast_Alan, signing up now.

That is excellent news! I can't wait to particapte.

Are you seriously considering capping the business class usage to 30 gb data per month? (As implied in a post above.). I hope not because that would make the service useless. It's even worse than the 250 cap on residental customers (the last I remember, it may be different now) which a family can easily use on Netflix & Hulu. I'm sorry but this is ridiculous.

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@miagracie wrote:

Are you seriously considering capping the business class usage to 30 gb data per month? (As implied in a post above.). I hope not because that would make the service useless. It's even worse than the 250 cap on residental customers (the last I remember, it may be different now) which a family can easily use on Netflix & Hulu. I'm sorry but this is ridiculous.

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No one is considering that, no. When the SamKnows study was first announced it was listed that you couldn't participate if you used more than 30GB per month. Many people didn't like that and they decided to remove that limit.

Just an FYI about the Samknows study. I received the box last week, and installed it in my network as per the instructions. The box sits downstream of your router (basically, you pull all wired connections from your router and plug them into the monitor box, then have a single connection to your router from the monitor box) watching the internal traffic as well as the traffic over the cable modem. 

The connections are all 1000baseT, so there is no major impact on the primary WiFi and wired traffic as far as I can tell; however, if you have a guest network the monitor box blocks this traffic. I have Apple routers and access points configured to provide a primary and guest WiFi network. The guest WiFi network is blocked on all access points except the router (which is upstream of the monitor box). 

I have reported the issue to Samknows.

hgh