How do your actual ISP speeds compare to the advertised speed?
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Missing option (Score:1)
Ask my Neighbor as I'm too cheap to purchase my own.
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Which could also mean that I don't use Internet at all, period.
How could it mean that?
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It means what it says. The verb used was subscribe, not use. Using one's neighbors wi-fi for internet while not subscribing to a service of one's own fits that options perfectly. The option does not at all mean "I don't use the internet." That would be a rather nonsensical reading.
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Another missing option: My ISP is gaming speedtests.
I pay for 120/12Mbit/s. I get in most speedtests 121/12.1Mbit/s. Which is suspicious by itself.
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I get Gigabit Internet and the speeds can't really be higher than expected, because my PC NIC is Gigabit as well.
Might theoretically get higher speeds but can't verify that.
Mmmm Fiber (Score:1)
I love my Google Fiber. Great tech support, everything as advertised. And when my CC was stolen last month and I didn't have a way to pay until I got a new one.... they didn't charge me any late fees.
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Love my fiber connection, too - in our town implemented by the city's utility companies (in St. Gallen, Switzerland) - and ISPs can offer data access over the city's fiber.
Promised 100MBit/s up / 100MBit/s down; 1 static IPv4 address; IPv6 support - all working absolutely fine...
A new provider has started offering 1GBit/s up+down for a reasonable rate - but I'll wait and see how happy people will be with them - for now, 100MBit/s up+down is plenty for me...
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NSA not CIA.
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Broadband speed and cost vs other countries (Score:2)
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Being small (20% the size of California) homogeneous and rich is a trifecta for public utilities. Once you start talking ex-urbs price becomes pretty rough. Not that I don't agree with you but S. Korea is a pretty easy place to wire up.
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We can offer 6-18mbps down and 1mbps up, on a single line.
Fuck, you're all at it! The symbol for mega is "M", not "m". "m" is the symbol for "milli" – i.e., 1000th. "1mbps" means one millibit per second, i.e., one bit every thousand seconds. Remind me not to get an account with your ISP.
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That's why i do it - it's expected!
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I dunno. We are not talking a "live" or "real-time" conversation here. There is time to articulate thoughts and type things out correctly.
This is more of a generalization of posting on boards/forums/etc, not aimed at any specific person.
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Re: Broadband speed and cost vs other countries (Score:1)
Heck, I'd be happy to get that. I get an advertised 3Mbps down and 768k up, and that is the fastest I can purchase from At&t. My actual speeds are about 1Mbps down and 256k up. The Internet is completely out 3-5 days a month and after an hour on phone support wasting my time they admit there is an outage and tell me it will be fixed within 72 hours.
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Just think about it.
This is not an economic problem. It's a problem with regulation, strategy, or whatever.
Wherever you live, you have roads to get there. Roads are thousands of times more expensive than fiber, and they need constant maintenance, investment, and rebuilding. You also have electricity virtually everywhere, or you wouldn't care so much about internet access. Internet access is chump change compared to the rest of infrastructure that you keep building and maintaining.
The problem must be somewhe
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My broadband speed is only like 25mb/s which is way faster than 56k modem [......]
No it's not, 25 millibits per second is 40 seconds per bit – way slower than 56 thousand bits per second.
Maybe you mean 25 megabits per second: 25Mb/s.
</pedantry>
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The slowest offer of my ISP used to be 120/12Mbit/s. Recently they reinstated the 40/4Mbit/s option.
I like the '12' bit a whole lot more than the '120' bit of that offer. 12 is much, much better than the 0.768 ADSL delivered.
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My broadband speed is only like 25mb/s which is way faster than 56k modem, but I tried downloading a 35gB file the other day and it took me about 2 days
That doesn't sound right (unless you really did mean 25 millibits per second, and then it seems too fast). That download ought to take about three hours [wolframalpha.com], so unless you're saturating your link with other stuff, you're not getting your advertised speed. It may be that the remote server can't handle the load, or it may be your ISP. If it actually took two days, then you're getting closer to 1.6Mb/s on average [wolframalpha.com], so you should probably complain to your ISP.
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He didn't say exactly where that 35GB (I presume gigabytes) was downloaded from. If I use Google Public DNS then my Apple downloads (via Akamai CDN) come from NTT in Japan at less than 256 kilobits/sec. If I use my ISP's DNS then the Apple downloads come from an Akamai CDN about 3 hops away and max out my 20 megabits/sec link. Just a slight difference. Going international is often the bottleneck, especially when your "national ISP" peers with crappy link providers.
I'm relatively lucky (Score:2)
At least if the comp is other Comcast subscribers. I live in a semi-rural area that doesn't have all that many cable subscribers. We are on Comcast's lowest tier service, but when I measure the speed I consistently get 60MB+ down (only 6 up though).
For comparison - at my mom's house, in a residential area containing thousand of suburban houses, 6MB down is about the best you'll ever see - and a good bit of the time your queries are just hanging there.
Varies. (Score:2)
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The average speed for my connection is somewhat lower than the advertized. I reach the 500Mbps upload usually, except weekday evenings and weekend days where it is limited to about 80Mbps if the traffic goes to other countries. If I send data to some host in Lithuania I get the full 500Mbps.
Really not a bad deal for 23EUR/month (and no caps, I upload about 60TB/month).
Getting faster speeds than you pay for (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps those with DOCSIS 3.0 modems on faster paid connections might get higher priority than I do for those speeds, but perhaps not?
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Weird. TWC let offers cable modem users upgrade to faster DOCSIS v3 like in Southern CA. I swapped cable modems through snail mails after seeing slightly faster speeds on the old DOCSIS v2 modems.
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Higher, at first ... (Score:4, Interesting)
My CenturyLink DSL connection starts out slightly faster than the advertized rate, but if do any sort of sustained high bandwidth activity, it slowly gets worse and worse. So anytime I watch something on Netflix it starts out at the highest quality, and then every 5-10 minutes stops to rebuffer at a lower quality, until it hits 0.7 Mbps. This occurs regardless of whether I am watching during peak hours or not, and I've seen it with long FTP downloads as well so it is not specific to Netflix, or caused by congestion.
I haven't been able to track down whether it is caused by ISP throttling, or if my wireless router / DSL modem has issues with sustained use. I've tried doing speed tests before, during, and after the problem occurs and they always show that my connection has the full advertized speed.
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Run it thru a VPN to see if it shows the same degradation. If it doesn't degrade, there's your answer. If it does degrade, it doesn't mean your equipment is bad, it just might mean they throttle all sustained transfers regardless of source or type.
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could also be error correction in the modem recommending a lower rate.
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As an ancillary comment to this, you'll sometimes run into this issue with cheap or older hardware as the components begin to heat up. Turning it off after a little while would allow it to cool down or putting the modem in a location where there's more airflow would keep it cooler.
In particular with Centurylink, their cable boxes will freeze and reset if they get too hot, and their power tolerance is really low - to the point where we had to plug it directly into the wall because the voltage / resistance d
It SAYS it's fast, but it's slow. (Score:1)
You run speedtests and it says 50Mb.
You try to watch a 60 second thing on an Apple TV or youtube or something, and it spins and spins, caches and caches, plays 5 seconds, stops for 5 minutes, etc.
Reset everything, replaced everything over time, but sometimes everything just sucks.
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If you're living near artillery roads you should be worried by massive howitzers and other dangerous pieces of hardware.
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Thanks, friendly ISP customer service representative, but you forgot the part where I looked over and saw half the lanes were closed for no damned reason except to get me to pay for the toll road
Only half my speed is advertised. (Score:2)
My service is 60 megs and I get 64-65 but they don't specify an uplink speed. I get 4 consistently so I assume that's what I'm supposed to get. Oh, I just checked and they now specify 4 megs up. And no data caps . To me, that's far more important than the speed.
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Promise low - deliver high (Score:2)
What can I say it's our mantra. Yes I am my own ISP. We almost never lose a customer unless they move.
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At most I get like 400MB/s for an advertised GB connection.
400 megabytes per second (MB/s) is 3.2 Gb/s (assuming 8 bits per byte) – what are you complaining about?
If you mean "megabits", that's "Mb/s".
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The hardware is quite likely the problem. There are only few consumer grade gigabit routers that can handle anywhere near the max speed between internet and local network. Its slowly getting better as now most get to 600-700Mb/s (or more), but just few years ago barely anything got above 500.
source:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com... [smallnetbuilder.com]
Pay for 50/50 (Score:2)
But I've gotten 6 or 7 MBps downloads. I'm not that concerned about uploads though I haven't had a problem with them.
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Off by a factor of 8? Internet speeds are generally quoted in Mbps not MBps. 50.0 Mbps = 6.25 MBps. Your results match.
About As Advertised (Score:4, Insightful)
No doubt it'll slow down a bit as more people pile on, but it should be pretty sweet for the forseeable future.
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My Bright House Lightning 75 in Central Florida is advertised as 75Mbs, but I consistently see 83-84Mbps
This is consistant with my experience. I had Lightning 35, and regularly saw 40 Mbps. I just upgraded to Lightning 150 and I can consistently get 170Mbps down. Best of all, there aren't any usage caps.
comcast (Score:2)
I have comcast, advertised as the top Wi-Fi speeds of any ISP.
After 8 calls to customer support, I get almost 1Mb/s on My 50Mb/s connection!
They refuse to upgrade my router to a dual band, ended up buying my own. Just wanted to point at them and laugh with you all :-)
CableOne delivers: (Score:2)
My link "cheats" (Score:2)
I recently subscribed to SaskTel's MaxTV IPTV services. While my download speeds remain unchanged and in line with what's promised, my upload speeds have seen a near 30% boost. But that's because in order to enable the IPTV, the link was actually upgraded to 25 megabits from 6, and the IPTV doesn't use the upload bandwidth, leaving it available for me.
This is actually an ideal situation for me, because upload speeds for me to ship code are far more important to me than download speeds. I've had far mo
about (Score:1)
Virgin Media - UK (Score:2)
I'm paying for 152Mb/s downstream and 12Mb/s upstream with Virgin Media in the UK. That's generally what I get, though it will sometimes dip down to about 140Mb/s in the evening peak.
Reliability is generally ok. I've had a few faults over the last few years, but they've usually sorted them within 24 hours.
The UK's an absolute postcode lottery when it comes to broadband. There are streets less than a mile from me where the highest speed anybody will advertise is 2Mb/s (and this is in London suburbia). Ironic
Speed isn't everything (Score:4, Insightful)
Once we get things moving through the intertubes the sustained speed closely matches what we pay for. Notice my qualification "Once we get things moving". We have high latency and frequent dropped packets. So while our speed matches our plan, the over all quality sucks. I should also add that speed is a relative term. We get 3mb/s for $50/month and we're glad to be able to get it. Our neighbor not to far down the road only has old fashion dial-up.
But then again we live in a rural area with CenturyLink as our only option so it isn't surprising that our connectivity is so poor. CenturyLink has a proven track record for not investing in new infrastructure, never mind maintaining what they already have in place. CenturyLink epitomizes all that is wrong with intrenched monopolies.
Speed rarely matters (Score:4, Interesting)
Speed rarely matters.
Speedtest and other such metrics often fail because the ISP codes routing to support better than real results.
What really matters is capacity of the whole network. Does the network itself route efficiently for all protocols and destinations. Speed is just one indicator of capacity, but isn't the be all, end all measurement.
At work, I sit on the end of a Gig pipeline out to the internet, Capacity is fine. Speed doesn't indicate what the capacity limit is. As long as you have capacity, speed is not ever going to be issue. The problem is when Capacity is near max, the speed suffers (symptomatically), however it is still possible to have speed tests succeed when capacity is impacted by watching for speed tests and giving network priority to those, while neglecting regular traffic, giving the appearances of speed where capacity is at limit, producing inaccurate results, "my speed is fine, but Netflix is still buffering"
Give me real monitoring tools, and I'll show you where the network problems are, and it is rarely "speed".
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Speed doesn't matter, Congrestion matters. You can have all the "speed" you need, but if the network is congested it doesn't matter. I could have a 10Gig link, and it wouldn't matter if somewhere between me and the other end, it is congested.
You can have your 80 MBS Cable connection, and be able to pull the full 80, but if you're congested down the line, speed doesn't matter.
Here is a test, set up a BitTorrent of some popular Movie ISO, set it to FULL SPEED to your desktop/laptop. Then setup a console (XBOX
What time of day? (Score:2)
I find I get speed at or above the advertised rate during the day, but as soon as large numbers of my neighbors start getting home and firing up Netflix it drops off fast.
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As advertised (Score:1)
2400 baud, right on the money!
Up/Down speed? (Score:1)
The download speed is often a wee bit above the advertised rates, which is good
The upload speed is often below the advertised rates, which is bad.
Both (Score:2)
Gigabit (Score:2)
I have gigabit through Google Fiber and Surewest .. and get about that much with each.
Paying for 25/5... (Score:2)
sonic (Score:1)
posting to the graveyard here, but in case someone is still alive out there
i have sonic dsl. its not the fastest by far. its reasonably economical. one of the
great parts about these guys is they try really hard to get you the best pair and
the max speed you can given your situation. installer tells you the noise level in
dbm.
you can call at any time any they will tell you without dicking around that the rate adapter has settled at
14Mbit/s
if you call them them they'll be happy to reset it to seek up, or hardwi
With my ISP, speed is not the problem (Score:3)
It's the stupid, scumsucking usage cap.
Down as promised, up 50 % faster (Score:1)
Promised 50MBit/s up / 50MBit/s down;
realized: 75MBit/s up / 50MBit/s down.
I'm on fiber.
ISP speed and actual speed are not the same (Score:1)
My ISP provides me a 50Mb connection, so to the ISP I probably have 50Mb, but to the thing I am connecting at the very end of the route, Amazon or Google for example, provides me data at their rate. So asking this question is really nonsense since I can get 50Mb if I pick something close to the connection point, but I typically get much less because I am downloading from somewhere popular.
Want more than advertised? By the cheapest tier (Score:2)
Depends on the application (Score:1)
Comcast works great with a business account (Score:2)
In the house I bought last year, the cheapest Comcast business tier is just a smidgen more expensive than the home tier I would have wanted...and it's by far the best option around, way better than DSL.
Apparently having a business account means that you get dedicated cable (= your neighbors don't slow you down), super fast responses in tech support, and even your own salesman...which is a little weird. But in any case, it's never given me lower than advertised, even when people with non-business accounts a
Perhaps this is obligatory but... (Score:3)
Every time the weather gets bad, their connection goes to shit. It doesn't matter if I'm at home, or 30 miles away on their "Business Class" internet at work. It cuts out over and over and Comcast doesn't give two craps about fixing it.
Try working from home in IT on a connection that drops every couple minutes. It's incredibly frustrating--even moreso when I looked at the ridiculous prices they charge me every month.
Condointernet (Score:2)
Condointernet in Seattle works pretty well. Maybe one connection issue for a few minutes every three months. Speed on their slower lines works out to be a bit below advertised, but pretty damn good. (Advertised service speeds are available at your DSLAM port but you might get 2/3rds of that in practice.) If 60 Mbps or so with no bandwidth cap isn't enough, you should stop downloading the library of Congress. But very good service if it's available at your location.
Comcast in Seattle, on the other hand,
Yay Charter (Score:2)
Supposed to be 100 Gbps but only 99 Gbps (Score:1)
Seriously, I rarely achieve the full 100,000 Mbps speeds we were promised on Internet 2.