Remember the broadband.gov site that some of you visited to test your Internet speed? Well, the results are in. The average advertised broadband speed is 6.7 mMbps. The average real speed is about 4 mMbps, which is a McEstimated 6% or 600% of the advertised speed, depending on how many martinis you had last night.
Even though the FCC can’t regulate ISPs because any regulation will destroy the magic free market fairy dust, cute kittens and shiny ponies that power our Internet revolution, they’ve proposed a labeling standard that would show how well an ISP lives up to its broadband claims.
Omnes Omnibus
Why can’t it be both at the same time?
salacious crumb
mistermix, I know this is off topic, but any chance you can start a thread on the Abu Ghraib style pictures of Israeli soldiers posing in front of dead Palestinians and posting it on Facebook?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2010/aug/17/israel-palestinian-territories
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
We have 16mbps service and if we get half of that we are doing good. I have complained about it but they say everything looks good to them. We seem to average 3-5 mbps and that’s about as good as it gets.
But there is no other cable/broadband competition in our area. Forget DSL, that really sucks around here (Verizon).
Zach
Assuming you mean the average speed is 60% of the advertised speed, this isn’t necessarily (and likely isn’t actually) true.
mean(a)/mean(b) != mean(a/b)
My guess would be that the average is actually a little better than 60%, since cable connections advertise their peak speed which is rarely attainable. This is true for DSL as well, but less so. All of the numbers are higher for cable connections, generally, so these will dominate the two individual mean calculations.
WereBear
Oh, gee, they can advertise something they rarely give? Stupid regulations! Why not let them just make something up? Then we can all feel better about our broadband speed.
Of course, it won’t be there in reality, but that seems like a small matter of late.
Michael
Why do you trust the government to test this correctly?
I far more trust those who have the most to gain by making representations of quality and speed than I do the government that I help elect.
4tehlulz
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): Who the hell is your provider? I have 20/2 Mbps and generally can max out.
Omnes Omnibus
@Michael: I need more coffee. Don’t do this kind of thing this early in the morning; people are not yet prepared for it.
BR
And never mind that in Japan, South Korea, and scandanavia folks have had 100Mbps connections to their homes for several years.
13th Generation
Those d/l numbers seem about right for an average. However, Road Runner has what they call “turboboost”, which will give you an initial burst d/l rate of somewhere in the neighborhood of 15- 20mbps, but actual average speeds are probably around 5-7 mbps. I wonder how this factor might skew any results?
BR
@13th Generation:
Interesting. I bet they use a token bucket to do the rate limiting, but allow for a burst by providing a large bucket size. If they set the bucket fill rate to 5-7Mbps, then it’d allow for that as a long term average rate but with periodic bursts above.
RSA
I can type 300 words per minute … for very short periods of time.
El Cid
Oddly enough I have about 20.5mpbs whenever I test.
Comcast also has short term ‘boost’ levels, but also the new Docsis 3.0 standard appears to give consistently higher useful speeds without changing lines or plans.
It’s their TV service I don’t need.
13th Generation
@BR:
I’m certainly no IT guy, but I know if I use the Firefox add-on to test speed, the first time I do it, it’s high. If I do it a couple of more times right after, it shows more realistic speeds. The “burst” can’t be more than a few seconds, but maybe it gives artificially high readings to contribute to the average.
Kryptik
But but but but but if the ISPs were really that crooked and lying about speeds, we can just dump them and shop around for new upstarts who don’t lie about their speeds, can’t we? Can’t we? Has the Free Market Fairy Dust lied to me about the glory of free enterprise?!
J.W. Hamner
Right, because opposing public utility style broadband means you oppose all forms of regulation of ISPs!
mistermix
@Zach: Yes, I know that, that’s the beauty of a McEstimate.
Turbulence
@4tehlulz: Who the hell is your provider? I have 20/2 Mbps and generally can max out.
Many cable internet installations can technically support very high speeds like that, but only as long as there aren’t many other connections from your neighbors or they aren’t doing much. What typically happens is that a cable company will start offering new service in an area and the first few subscribers will find it to be lightning fast. But as more subscribers in the area start using it, performance degrades for everyone. Cable companies seem to be really awful about underprovisioning, in part because of stupid technology decisions they’ve made.
rufflesinc
Since 14.4k modems, I’ve always found a consistent overhead, such that instead of using 8 bits per byte, you’ll get a dead-on estimate by using 10 bits per byte. When I had a 56k connection at 50k, the download was 5kbyte/s. When I had a 1.5mbit dsl, the download was 150kbyte/s. When I had a 3.0mbit dsl, the download was 300kbyte/s.
I had cable twice for short periods of time but the speeds were more erratic.
stuckinred
That test froze my machine twice.
jeffreyw
Fuckin hughes.net. That is all I’m gonna say about that.
Zach
@mistermix: To be fair, we employ the same McEstimate in actual science all of the time (just not for quantities like means and ratios of means that are expected to be highly correlated).
El Cid
@jeffreyw: I’m assuming anyone who has that didn’t have other options?
ChrisS
Stupid fucking liberals, next thing you’ll be wanting to know what’s really in a big mac or where your diamonds come from.
just shut up and let us sell you our shit.
El Cid
@ChrisS: When Stephen Colbert had on the rep from the American Meat Institute he introduced but didn’t much examine the topic of ammonia-laden “pink slime” in any nationally produced ground beef.
Karmakin
Maybe the advertising should be changed or the labeling should be clearer, but that sounds about right from a technical point of view.
With DSL, distance is a huge factor for speeds. The further you are to the local box, the more speeds will be degregated down.
And with both DSL and Cable, line quality is also a huge factor, and a lot of places in the US really do suffer from poorly maintained lines, which hurts actual bandwidth.
Which is why I always suggest to people, if you’re not happy with your cable, try DSL. If you’re not happy with your DSL, try cable. And if you’re not happy with either, move.
And if you are somewhat happy with one, chances are the grass is NOT greener on the other side.
Oh, and when I say move, I don’t mean move down the street. I mean move out of the locality altogether. Chances are there are local political reasons why the lines are not maintained like they should.
John D.
Dammit, (almost) everyone, it is Mbps, not mbps. You are off 9 orders of magnitude.
jwb
@John D.: “You are off 9 orders of magnitude.” Just keeping in the spirit of the McEstimate I’m sure.
autrement qu'etre
Huh. I test at 4MBps, but I have (just made available) Fios service in my building all to myself at the moment, it seems, so I expect it to go down eventually.
jeffreyw
@El Cid: Yup, unless dial up is counted as an option.
catclub
@autrement qu’etre:
No, I’m sure it will go up!
Billy K
Which would do…. what, exactly? In most areas I’ve lived, there really isn’t a choice of ISPs. I live in the middle of Metropolitan Dallas and my ISP choices consist of AT&T or AT&T.
There is no true competition in broadband; just like there never was in phone service. The Free Market Faeries have failed us.
ChrisS
@Billy K:
I have a choice between Time Warner or Verizon. It’s funny though, their pricing is near identical and neither is very progressive with regards to a free and open internet. So how about I get a NFP municipal ISP? GOD FORBID, THAT”S SOCIALISM!’
mistermix
@John D.: Yeah, sorry, fucked that up because I was too busy compiling my McEstimate.
Gin & Tonic
@John D.:
I’m sorry, but I’ve worked in data communications for about three decades, and this is the first time I’ve seen anyone making this sort of distinction. Could you explain?
Do you mean maybe the difference between MBps and Mbps, i.e. bits vs bytes? Otherwise I’m not seeing it. Megabits is megabits, approximately one million bits.
J.W. Hamner
@Gin & Tonic:
He’s talking SI units (I think), but obviously a millibyte doesn’t make any sense.
QDC
@Gin & Tonic:
Metrically speaking, M=mega=10^6^ and m=milli=10^-3^. Hence 9 orders of magnitude.
Don’t contemplate the concept of a millibit, though, or you’ll hurt your brain and possibly rip the fabric of spacetime.
RareSanity
This is the reason why there is not more outrage about this country’s terrible broadband services.
ISPs should be required to advertise the minimum guaranteed speed of their service, not a theoretical maximum that no one ever reaches. It artificially skews the discussion about broadband and allows ISPs to use the strawman of the mythical “data hogs” as to why the need to use traffic shaping and net neutrality most be stopped. The truth is that, if I have cable internet and I live on a cul-de-sac (which I do, on both counts), and my neighbors have cable internet, there is no way anyone on my street will come close to the 6Mbps service we are paying for. For DSL, if I’m beyond a certain distance from the central station, their is literally no way I can ever reach the peak speed advertised.
Just imagine how the discussion changes if ISPs could only advertise the minimum guaranteed speed, for each home they service, then try and charge each person the same amount with different minimum speeds.
If this “truth in advertising” thing happens, it would be the first step to placing the focus of stifled broadband on the providers, where it belongs.
Gin & Tonic
Thanks for the explanations. I haven’t had much use for computing fractions of bits, so didn’t even think that someone could misinterpret an “M|m” in this context.
Sentient Puddle
Here’s what I still don’t get, and maybe someone who knows something about IT can help: Why is network communication still measured in Mbps rather than MBps? Just about everything else in computing is measured in bytes, and I always have to pause and remind myself to divide by 8 when I see some speed mentioned.
Gin & Tonic
@Sentient Puddle:
You’re lucky we’re not still talking about baud.
RareSanity
@Billy K:
This is where I think I keep my sanity on this subject.
I think that cable companies can legitimately lay claim to having “built their own network”, AT&T cannot. AT&T and what’s left of the other Bells keep playing games with this “our network business”. They want to shirk some of their responsibilities so they can “compete” with VoIP providers because of the common carrier rules. But, wants the government to “keep it hands off my Medicare”, and not pursue net-neutrality.
AT&T has long enjoyed an anti-trust exempted, monopoly. They are in the position to make these ridiculous demands because of the fruits of that monopoly. I really wish the Democrats would stand up and say,
“AT&T, the American people have allowed you to be a monopoly for to long. You have abused the trust placed upon you, you have have abused the intent of the Universal Service Fund, and pocketed billions of dollars to the detriment of the very people that sanctioned your monopoly. The time for honoring yourself will soon be at an end. The US Congress, on behalf of the American People, will pass legislation removing your anti-trust exemption status. We will then pass legislation classifying internet service passed over the AT&T and other Bells wires as a public utility subject to the rules and regulations thereof.”
Man, that would be sweet.
And never happen…
RareSanity
@Sentient Puddle:
Because that is the most fundamental unit in the digital world. Everyone understands it and can easily translate it to whatever application they have.
A bit, is a bit, is a bit….’1′ or ‘0’, on or off, true or false, in any system.
A byte is generally a byte, except that you have to take into account its endianness, which is a mess on its own.
A bit is one of the only things that everyone that deals in digital can agree on.
ChrisS
fucking moderation again. Probably for writing the S-word.
PeakVT
@Sentient Puddle: Because bits travel sequentially down the pipe (or tube, if you prefer) but inside a computer tend hang out in grids and move around in parallel. A communications system really doesn’t care how the bits are grouped at either end, but computers (to oversimplify) tend to work on a specific number of bits at a time (a byte being a group of 8 bits; computers tend to work on either 32 or 64 bits at a time these days).
mclaren
@Gin & Tonic:
We will be talking about baud soon if American broadband continues to throttle back its speed.
The local big-box store’s free internet just throttled back speeds from 1.5 Mbits to 60 kbits. Soon it’ll be down to dialup speeds.
America is degenerating fast. How long before we abandon cars and go back to horses? How long before we forget how to make fire and start eating meat raw?
morzer
@BR:
South Korea leads the world in broadband availability and speed – and it does so as the result of a government-led plan. Strange, that apparently government works in East Asia, but not in the USA….
DPirate
That would be nice. Broadband in Unalaska is 2kbps up, ~35 kbps down. Dialup is about half that, I guess.
morzer
One thing I’ve noticed lately is a strange tendency for people with laptops to convene on a bench at the top of my street. Coincidentally, perhaps, there is one unsecured wireless router operating nearby. It rejoices in the highly original name of “linksys”.
Sly
In other totally unsurprising news: As distance from the Cordoba House increases, opposition to its construction increases. 33% of Manhattanites oppose its construction, compared to 53% of New Yorkers and 68% of Americans.
Setting aside the universal recognition of religious liberty throughout the United States for a brief moment, I’d like to take this opportunity to tell anyone who lives outside NYC and opposes construction, in the colloquial tradition of my ancestors, to go fuck off and die.
azlib
ISPs should not be advertising any link speeds. It is not uncommon for ISPs to oversubscribe their networks which usually means they have a bottleneck at one our more of the network aggregation points where packets get dropped due to congestion. If you are online at a time of low usage your download speed should improve, but not always, especially if the ISP is rate limiting the end-user connections.
You also need to remember download speeds may vary depending on the remote end point of any connection. There is no telling where a bottleneck may exist and it might not even be your own ISP.
J.W. Hamner
@morzer:
I thought J-Com was the fastest… and a publicly traded company in Japan. But if you’ve got a reasonable strategy to find 60 votes in the Senate to nationalize the telecom industry, while also funding laying fiber optic cable to every house in the middle of nowhere… then by all means… let’s hear it.
morzer
@J.W. Hamner:
And the fact remains that South Korea’s broadband strategy, which is a damn sight better than anything the US has managed, was designed and led by the government. As to why we in the US can’t manage this.. well, don’t shoot the messenger, eh?
morzer
@J.W. Hamner:
http://techsling.com/2010/08/broadband-speed-asia-dominates-list-of-fastest-cities/
Since you ask about broadband speeds in Asia and globally.
morzer
On Japan and government and broadband:
http://techsling.com/2009/05/fast-broadband-taking-a-cue-from-japan/
Cunning weasels, those Japanese, eh? They even get government to invest in the public good!
gex
@morzer: I think you are confused as to the purpose of our government. The South Korean approach assumes people are the one government works for. Our approach assumes the corporations are the ones our government works for. And given that I *require* broadband based on my profession, and my only choice is Comcast, that approach is working just fine. I’m paying, what almost $60 for “12 Mbps” speeds. I’ve not had a test exceed 6 Mbps. We pay more than other country’s citizens and we receive less. Sounds just like health care doesn’t it? And it looks like post-secondary education is heading that route too.
morzer
@gex:
*smiles* Well, I admit to being old-fashioned. I have a naive and touching commitment to “government by the people, for the people”.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@4tehlulz:
Our broadband provider is Charter. Of course, if I go to their web site and test my speed it’s right up there at 16/2 but go anywhere else and it falls on its face (6mbps to SF, 5mbps to LA, 2.7 to Chicago and downward as I go out).
Funny how that works…
Platosearwax
I’m in Norway and irritated that my 30Mbps/5Mbps line only tests out at 25/4.5. And I pay almost 50 dollars a month! But I guess if I don’t like that there are only 20 or so other ISP’s to choose from.
Just wanted to make y’all jealous.
DPirate
Yeah, well, you guys eat brown cheese. WTF?