I suspect many of you got the same thing. You will find at the end of this post an email from Cox claiming they have just doubled my Internet speeds up to 50 Mbps. I don’t even have to do anything!

That’s very nice of them. However I’d like to make a couple of points about this email; first, I tested my connection on Speedtest (remember that?), and I pulled about 27 up and (amazingly) 16 down with a ping of 36, which is good, not great. My national grade is a B+ and my regional grade A-, however subsequent tests to Mojave were slower while Las Vegas was faster, as expected.

However, the email has some important word choices in it. First, it says “up to” 50Mbps, and the fact is you never get the max speed advertised as that’s only a theoretical based on ideal network conditions which never exist. It also mentions at the bottom of the email you should use what’s known as a DOCSIS (the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) 3.0 compliant modem, and they’re right. If you’ve been using the same modem for more than a year or so, you might want to call up and see if they’ll upgrade you.