demkat620 - March 13, 2010 | 5:22 pm · Link

Now that’s what I want to see the FCC doing instead of worrying whether I saw 2 seconds of a nipple or if Howard Stern said something dirty.
Priorities people!

Yutsano - March 13, 2010 | 5:27 pm · Link

16054 download, 1978 upload. Vista yelling at me through the entire test. I may need to upgrade to 7 soon.

MikeJ - March 13, 2010 | 5:29 pm · Link

Wonder if this FCC guy will go to Jenny Toomey’s conference like Adelstein did. Played harmonica too.

mcc - March 13, 2010 | 5:30 pm · Link

What I would like to see is whether the FCC (or FTC?) is going to do something about cell phones getting exclusive contracts with single network providers and this just being the normal thing now.

(This is on my mind because I finally got an iPhone last night, after delaying as long as possible to see if there was any way to avoid becoming an AT&T customer…)

mistermix - March 13, 2010 | 5:31 pm · Link

@JenJen: That’s a bit slow for 15829 down.

Mine is 5829 down and 386 up, which is what my provider guarantees. I have had problems with the supposedly “faster” provider here, so I chose the slower but more reliable one.

Yutsano - March 13, 2010 | 5:32 pm · Link

@Linkmeister: Nah, it was just the security passes Vista wanted me to approve to move on in the test is all. My computer might not be able to handle 7 anyway. Every time one of those pops up though having to drop whatever I’m doing just to hit continue, well, it gets old.

Violet - March 13, 2010 | 5:33 pm · Link

Thanks for letting us know. I just tested. My connection is far too slow, but I think it could be affected by others in the house downloading large files at the moment.

I’m thrilled that Obama is a technocrat. And glad the FCC is doing real stuff instead of focusing on half-second views of nips on TV.

cleek - March 13, 2010 | 5:35 pm · Link

My computer might not be able to handle 7 anyway.

i’ve got 7 running on an old Pentium M 1.2GHz laptop with just 1G of mem. added a 2G thumbdrive for “ReadyBoost”, and it works fine.

if your PC can run Vista, it should be fine with 7.

JGabriel - March 13, 2010 | 5:36 pm · Link

... threatening to extend neutrality rules to wireless networks …

From a consumer perspective, that should be “promising to extend”, not “threatening”.

Perhaps the wording is just another sign of how thoroughly we’ve all internalized the “po’ corporate victims” meme — so defenseless against the big mean government, i.e., the people.

.

Ming - March 13, 2010 | 5:38 pm · Link

thanks for posting this, mistermix—(15K up, 3K down)

Test your broadband « Later On - March 13, 2010 | 5:39 pm · Link

[...] in Daily life, Government, Obama administration at 3:39 pm by LeisureGuy Very interesting post at Balloon Juice by mistermix: Whatever else he is (secret Muslim, socialist, hater of America and [...]

Tim P. - March 13, 2010 | 5:40 pm · Link

18000~ DL 5000~ UL.. that’s a lot better than I would have expected.

As for technocrats, how about Eisenhower? I always hear him being lauded as a relatively sane and reasonable leader.

jeffreyw - March 13, 2010 | 5:45 pm · Link

Bah, fuckin hughes.net 383 down, 254 up, 822ms latency. Fuckin satellite “broadband”.

Zach - March 13, 2010 | 5:51 pm · Link

I’d have to go with Wilson or FDR as the first technocrat, I think. Obama would obviously like to be one, but it’s proving impossible. The structure of the Making Work Pay cut definitely put technocracy ahead of political expedience.

Also, it seems sort of odd for the FCC to spend money gathering data that they could just pay Speakeasy, Google, Speedtest.net, or DSLreports for. Apparently this speedtest is made by the folks behind speedtest.net anyway.

14mb/s down, 13 up over WiFi at school.

mistermix - March 13, 2010 | 5:55 pm · Link

As for “what this means”, good question.

I just checked B-J’s front page, and if you were visiting it for the first time ever, you’d download 7028 kb (kilobits). If you had visited it before, you’d download 1552 kb (because your browser keeps some of the page data cached.)

On my connection (~5000 kb down), it takes a bit more than a second, best case,to get the data in the front page the first time ever.

It’s never really that fast, for a number of technical reasons, but some people’s “broadband” will take 3-4 seconds to download just the page content in a best-case scenario. That’s pretty slow.

B-J’s pages are relatively heavy, but there are certainly sites that have more stuff on the front page.

ruemara - March 13, 2010 | 5:57 pm · Link

Doing this right now. My community is filled with rural, minority and native american peeps. We need all the upgrades we can get.

peachy - March 13, 2010 | 6:05 pm · Link

Did anyone else try the alternative engine (ookla)? I got results nearly three times, both up and down, as fast as with the first one. So what does that tell me?

gnomedad - March 13, 2010 | 6:16 pm · Link

Appointing people on the basis of competence and expecting them to actually do their jobs? More proof he hates America!

Jay C - March 13, 2010 | 6:23 pm · Link

OK: I guess I gotta be the one to piss on the parade, here: I went to broadband.gov, and not only did I not get any up/download figures, but it froze my browser (FFox on home router w/ VZN DSL) necessitating a restart.

Ami doin it rong?

MikeJ - March 13, 2010 | 6:25 pm · Link

@Jay C: Update your java vm.

dmsilev - March 13, 2010 | 6:28 pm · Link

@peachy: Mine defaulted to ookla (apparently the other one doesn’t work with Safari), and the results (2700 down, 500 up) are pretty close to what AT&T claims to be selling me.

-dms

JD Rhoades - March 13, 2010 | 6:32 pm · Link

Wait, that test demands…DEMANDS…that you provide your real name and address.

Clearly this is another Obambislamocommifascist plot to catalog all Interwebs users so that they can find us and round us up when the FEMA trucks arrive to take us all to them re-eddication camps I heard about.

JD Rhoades - March 13, 2010 | 6:36 pm · Link

@Phyllis:

Our plans are to put a netbook in the hands of every high school student, but many are hindered by limited Internet access once they leave school for the day.

At least that can be dealt with on a tech basis. A similar proposal here’s being hindered by assholes who oppose it because (a) it costs tax money, and (b) those idiot students will just lose or steal the computers.

sukabi - March 13, 2010 | 6:39 pm · Link

@Jay C: It did that to me as well…. you just have to WAIT… it will eventually load the test screen again (a 3+ minute wait), then reclick the test button and it should bring up the actual test screen…

I thought it was an issue with the mac I’m using, but did the same thing on my PC… you just have to wait for it… :-(

Jay C - March 13, 2010 | 6:41 pm · Link

@MikeJ:

Thanks, that seemed to do the trick: however – I got odd results from the two tests for DL/UP/lat/jit : bb.gov gave me figures of 298/729/264/367, while Ookla came back at 2670/724/26/1

Can anyone explain the disparity?

Yutsano - March 13, 2010 | 6:44 pm · Link

@sukabi: It did lock up on me for a second too. I just got past it and then it all worked fine.

jeffreyw - March 13, 2010 | 6:50 pm · Link

Mrs J showed me this pic she took at the shelter the other day. She took pains to mention that the woman holding the puppies was Mrs So and So, the wife of a high muckety muck at the local university. Question: Was it a trap to see if I recognized her?

Yutsano - March 13, 2010 | 6:52 pm · Link

@jeffreyw: It’s always a trap. Has Admiral Ackbar taught you nothing good sir?

jeffreyw - March 13, 2010 | 6:55 pm · Link

@Yutsano: Yes, he taught me to say “I’ve never seen her, maybe. Let me see those tits again”.

Martin - March 13, 2010 | 6:56 pm · Link

And his going after AT&T/Apple/Google is interesting. The issue was that Google Voice works as a VOIP client allowing a phone with either a 3G data plan or a WiFi connection to make calls of any type bypassing AT&Ts plan rates. Apple had blocked the app for sale at the behest of AT&T until the FCC jumped in.

If there are more moves along these lines, it could be a short time before Google (or Apple or anyone else) sell phones that have nothing but a data plan (like the $29.99 unlimited data plan Apple got for the iPad) and just use a free VOIP client like Google Voice on top of it, and nuke the whole cell minutes/calling plan bullshit.

Rather than working on nationwide broadband, I’d rather see the FCC jump in and say that LTE (or WiMax, whatever) will be the national wireless standard and anyone that doesn’t jump on won’t get a spectrum license.

jeffreyw - March 13, 2010 | 7:03 pm · Link

@Gravenstone: Yeah, the best I ever got was 1.7mb down, and that was 3am. Painfully slow afternoons when the kids get out of school.

Jason Bylinowski - March 13, 2010 | 7:23 pm · Link

Thanks for the link, John Cole. I live in such a backwoods town, so it’s always to my glee when I test out the connection and it comes out faster every year. This time I have crossed the 30-megabit threshhold…...it is perhaps the only thing that I will miss when we finally find a house to buy and have to leave town.

Phyllis - March 13, 2010 | 7:58 pm · Link

@JD Rhoades:

and (b) those idiot students will just lose or steal the computers.

Probably one or the other*. There’s no way to completely eliminate that from happening.

I just despair at the attitudes much of the public have about public schools and the kids who attend them have these days. I mentioned our referendum in an earlier thread and during a public meeting to explain it, someone actually said to my superintendent, “Why should we fund the schools, considering what’s coming out of them.” Like that statement isn’t, you know, code.

My boss very gently said that parents in the community were sending us the best they have.

*I hasten to add that I’m more worried about other people in the homes, like relatives or ‘family friends’ making off with them than I am the kids themselves.

Citizen_X - March 13, 2010 | 8:12 pm · Link

OT—but on-topic regarding a failed technocrat—the Demon Sheep ad guy has a new ad for Fiona, where he protrays Boxer’s head as a giant menacing blimp. It’s really bizarre (and long), and might have been effective if it didn’t end up hyping Carly freaking I-eliminated-28,000-Cali-jobs-trashed-HP’s-stock-price-and-got-shitcanned Fiona.

Oh: 12Mbps down, 1.7Mbps up. OK, as compared to others’ results, but Comcast still sucks.

Nylund - March 13, 2010 | 8:23 pm · Link

I ran the test a few times (well, both versions of the tests). Quite a variation!

I got (approx):

2900 / 465

7600 / 1000

10900 / 1300

Speed Test « From Pine View Farm - March 13, 2010 | 8:46 pm · Link

[...] Balloon Juice.   « Robin Hooding in the UK | [...]

Mister Colorful Analogy - March 14, 2010 | 1:59 am · Link

Comcast Business Internet:

21524 down, 5632 up, 23 ms latency, 3 ms jitter

I usually hates me some Comcast (enough that I don’t have any level of TV service), but their business class cable modem service has been one of the best experiences I’ve had with a telecom. Credit where credit is due.

YellowJournalism - March 14, 2010 | 10:42 am · Link

now run by an asskicker named Julius Genachowski.

I read that as “asslicker“.

Too many political sex scandals. Not enough coffee.

Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist - March 14, 2010 | 12:15 pm · Link

Cool to see the FCC is actually behaving like a government agency instead of a corporation-fluffing outfit.

But speaking of that, are they doing anything about media consolidation? IMO that’s one of the biggest problems we have in the U.S.

Todd Dugdale - March 14, 2010 | 3:52 pm · Link

It isn’t so much that the current FCC is radical, as that it is simply very competent. They are actually doing things instead of kicking the can down the road, which is what we have become accustomed to.

We should have had a National Broadband Plan in place five years ago. Instead, we left it to the private sector to cherry-pick the most lucrative areas and freeze out others.

Let’s not forget that Google and the current FCC arranged to have significant wireless spectrum auctioned off with the provision that the data network be open to all devices. I think it might have been better if that space were reserved for a public wireless data infrastructure for the future, but the mere fact that the spectrum was left so open is a victory in itself.

The private sector really hasn’t stepped up to the plate; that can’t be denied.

As far as municipal wi-fi networks, which should be a no-brainer, the private sector has almost completely bowed out. Google set up a network somewhere in CA (SF?). Here in my home city of Minneapolis, the city laid out (and owns) a fibre network that serves as the backbone for a privately-owned wireless provider. This wi-fi service is a cheaper home broadband alternative than cable or phone company options, which proves that competition works in this industry to lower prices.

It is not unreasonable that a city should bear the costs of a backbone infrastructure, much like sewer and water, and create a fibre network. But the real issue is whether or not the private sector would even try to capitalise on that, given their history.

As an aside, I would add that our current urban utility infrastructure was laid out above-ground nearly a century ago to avoid contentious right-of way-issues. Those issues are now resolved, with municipalities being granted easements from the street. Much of the electrical and phone infrastructure could be placed below-ground along with the fibre network.