Linksys EA6350 Speed Upgrade

Last week I was checking on my Comcast Xfinity account and decided to see if I could upgrade my Internet speed. In the past I was told that if I wanted to upgrade, I would need to get one of their package deals with TV and Internet, and that I needed to use their equipment. I had just purchased a new router and cable modem at the time. While it is true that you have to get a package to get a price break on the first 12 months of service, you can also build your own package. I discovered that you can select Internet only if that is all you need. The speed options are 25Mbps, 100Mbps, 200Mbps, 300Mbps, 600Mbps, and 1000Mbps. I chose the 100Mbps speed and since I didn't want any other options the price was $55 per month. No discount, but I am okay with that because there is no price increase after 12 months. I also chose to use my own equipment. This was important because I knew my hardware would support the higher speed and was approved to work on their network. My cable modem is the Motorola MB7420, which supports 686Mbps and DOCSIS 3.0. My router is a Linksys EA6350 AC1200+ Dual-Band WiFi Router. This is an affordable router with many advanced features.

I applied the change to my Xfinity account, received a confirmation email, and waited for the magic speed increase to happen. After a few days, I ran a speed test and found that nothing had changed. I rebooted my modem and router and ran the speed test again. Still no change. I went to the Xfinity website and ran the activation steps for my modem. I wasn't sure if this was necessary, but I figured it wouldn't hurt. Logging onto the modem showed that the configuration file had been updated to performance select, which is the 100Mbps speed level. I ran a speed test again, but still no change. Next I went to the Xfinity message boards and found that many people were having the same problem after upgrading their Internet speed.

The next step would be to connect a computer directly to the cable modem and run a speed test. Since I could see the proper config file was there, I decided to focus on the router. One poster said that they had fixed the problem by resetting their router to factory default. Another post stated that the Media Prioritization settings were the problem. I logged into my router and saw that I had Media Prioritization activated, and under settings, the downstream bandwidth was set to 4096. I entered the bandwidth setting for 100Mbps which is 102400 and turned off Media Prioritization. I figured I wouldn't need it anymore with the faster speed. When I ran the speed test from a computer that had a wireless N adapter attached, the speed was 90Mbps. Problem solved! Other devices on the network get download speeds of around 30Mbps, which is due to the slower wireless G adapters. I am sharing this because of all the people that I saw with similar problems. If you own your own equipment, your router may be preventing faster download speeds.