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So how fast is your internet?

Unknown_K

Veteran Member
Joined
Sep 11, 2003
Messages
8,972
Location
Ohio/USA
Roadrunner sent me an email saying they upgraded my basic cable modem speed from 10Mbs/1Mbs to 15Mbs/1Mbs today. Speedtest says I get 20Mbs from multiple servers (which to be honest is about what I used to get anyway).

What are you guys getting?
 
It must be nice to have such internet speeds available to you. We live in a rural area with no access to cable or DSL so we have a wireless internet connection. Here's the Speedtest results from a test I just ran:



This connection costs $91/month. Luckily, my employer pays that, otherwise I would choose a slower but more affordable option.
 
Cablemodem connection through VTR.com in Chile.

speedtest.net:
download:43.47 Mbps
upload: 4.33 Mbps

Jose
 
Everybody knows this but speed test results vary so much even on the same connection. The target, the time of day, and your ISP can make a huge difference.

Using SpeedTest.Net I'm measuring 46Mb/sec down and 4.1Mb/sec up. To a more realistic server run by "connectedmn.org" it is 11Mb/sec down, 4Mb/sec up. And the latency for a ping response is 3x longer to that server.

Don't get too hung up on any number. Use it more to figure out what class of service you are paying for to your ISP. Anything beyond your ISP's local network is a crapshoot.


Mike
 
Cablemodem connection through VTR.com in Chile.

speedtest.net:
download:43.47 Mbps
upload: 4.33 Mbps
Being in the internet business, it always amazes me how much further along with speeds the rest of the world is over the US. We might cover a higher percentage of our land mass, but they stomp us in speed and quality.

My company is a rural ISP, so speeds aren't up there with the national providers. That said, we offer up to 9mb/768kb class speeds, but I often burst up to 12mbps in real world tests.
 
My account advertises 1.5Mb/s. I haven't checked speedtest.com in a while, but just did so now. I am getting very close to that and even more on one test. My historical average tends to be about 1.3Mb/s or so. Upload is usually considerably faster and this time hit 2.5Mb/s for the fastest one. Unlike cable and DSL, wireless commonly is faster on the uplink for some reason.

That said, I'm not sure that particular test has any practical value. For one, I notice they quote my outward facing IP. That is the same one that is used by at least 3 other (larger) towns, so I suspect that the speeds might not be to my computer. In practice I notice that servers tend to be slow to react, so speed is not so much of an issue because there is a wait for each of the components of a web page, which nowadays can be quit a few and from all over the world. I have a feeling that there are buffers in the system, which also would make speed tests irrelevant.

I think it depends on what you a doing. The internet is not a circuit like with a POTS connection and the traffic shaping devices that are installed at many points are both an unknown and highly variable. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if something like speedtest.com was on the whitelist for most traffic shaping appliances.
 
2388552187.png

At least not only downsides in living in a densely populated area (although not my preference)
 
It is easier to have fast broadband in tightly packed areas like Europe and Asia, people in the US are just spread out too far. The funny thing is few websites can feed you fast enough to saturate a 5Mbs connection anyway (I use Netflix HD streaming and can still browse the web with no speed issues).
 
Indeed - initially my connection was 16 Mbit, which would still perfectly fit my needs.
Competition and marketing gave me automatic increases over the last 5 years - but its just a number.
 
What's "cable"? :confused:

You guys must live in South Korea or another technologically advanced country. Tops available to me is 1.2M down, 750K up on a good day. I caught a fellow a couple of months ago marking the underground cable along side the road with his paint and flags. Since the county had just resurfaced the road, I didn't figure it was for more road work. It turns out that CenturyLink is thinking about running some real fiber up the road and the guy was from their contractor doing a bit of surveying.

That could make things quite pleasant if it extended to the DSL service.
 
Switched over to the dark side (convinced by wiffy and stepson to get on board) at the beginning of the month and getting just over 8Mbps up and just over 1Mbps down at the moment. This is cabled up to the router. Using WiFi it drops in half. This is sill though POTS wiring. They're in the process of running fibre-optic cabling though out our suburb so we coming out of the dark age by the end of 2013.
 
'Cable' as in a coax-wired cable TV connection simultaniously used for broadband - at least that is it with me.
Connections up to 120Mbit/s are available with that here, using EuroDocsis 3 protocol (supports up to 400 Mbit)
Fair enough the coax part is mostly just street to house, the rest is glassfiber. Currently glassfiber-to-the-home is in progressing fast too.
As 98% of Dutch households has a cable connection installed (originally for TV) its one of the main internet connection types in use, although ADSL is readily available too.
 
'Cable' as in a coax-wired cable TV connection simultaniously used for broadband - at least that is it with me.
Connections up to 120Mbit/s are available with that here, using EuroDocsis 3 protocol (supports up to 400 Mbit)
Fair enough the coax part is mostly just street to house, the rest is glassfiber. Currently glassfiber-to-the-home is in progressing fast too..

So how does one find this "cable" ? This is the supposedly technically-advanced USA, after all, where cable is largely unregulated and a private endeavor. So the cable providers cherry-pick the markets. If the same standard had been applied to the telephone, I'd still be using tin cans and string.
 
Comcast is mainly Cable, I don't know of anyone using Comcast that doesn't have Cable internet.

And my internet,
DSL (which I hate, $40/mo for this crap)
2388993702.png


And Sprint 3G, which I don't pay for:
2389006344.png

Not sure what's up with the speed today, but that's from inside and I'm not going outside in the rain for a speedtest :p.
 
Well, the cable infrastructure is already there in every home and the providers are regional. But they need to compete with ADSL suppliers.
 
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