The recent, and possibly ongoing, post by Yesman has gotten me wondering. I tried Glastnost, and found a possible problem. I'll paste in a copy of their report because I'm not really sure of the meaning. Could somebody translate the report into more easily understood English? BTW, I'm on Comcast cable.

REPORT:

Glasnost: Test if your ISP is shaping your traffic
Results for your host (c-67-170-212-199.hsd1.ca.comcast.net - 67.170.212.199):
Are certain ports blocked for all traffic?

3 out of 3 HTTP transfers on port 8080 failed to upload any data. It seems like your ISP hinders you from uploading HTTP traffic on port 8080 to our test server.

3 out of 3 control flow transfers on port 8080 failed to upload any data. It seems like your ISP hinders you from uploading control flow traffic on port 8080 to our test server.

Notice: Undefined offset: 0 in /local/var/www/bb/glasnost-analysis2.php on line 580

Notice: Undefined offset: 1 in /local/var/www/bb/glasnost-analysis2.php on line 581

Notice: Undefined offset: 0 in /local/var/www/bb/glasnost-analysis2.php on line 582

Notice: Undefined offset: 1 in /local/var/www/bb/glasnost-analysis2.php on line 583

Warning: Division by zero in /local/var/www/bb/glasnost-analysis2.php on line 587

Notice: Undefined offset: 0 in /local/var/www/bb/glasnost-analysis2.php on line 638

Notice: Undefined offset: 0 in /local/var/www/bb/glasnost-analysis2.php on line 640

Notice: Undefined offset: 1 in /local/var/www/bb/glasnost-analysis2.php on line 664

Notice: Undefined offset: 1 in /local/var/www/bb/glasnost-analysis2.php on line 666
Is your upload traffic rate limited?

Your ISP appears to rate limit your uploads.

Details:

* There is no indication that your ISP rate limits your HTTP uploads. In our tests, uploads using control flows achieved up to 3077 Kbps while uploads using HTTP achieved up to 3067 Kbps.

* Your ISP appears to rate limit uploads on port 8080. In our tests, uploads on port 8080 achieved up to 3077 Kbps while uploads on port 40088 achieved up to Kbps.
Is your download traffic rate limited?

There is no indication that your ISP rate limits your downloads.

Notice: Undefined offset: 0 in /local/var/www/bb/glasnost-analysis2.php on line 920

Notice: Undefined offset: 1 in /local/var/www/bb/glasnost-analysis2.php on line 920

END REPORT

I've always attributed my rather slow connection speeds to my old and slow system. Now I'm wondering whether the problem might be my ISP, Comcast.