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All the good AG has to do is go to https://www.samknows.com/

They collect data about ISPs worldwide from people like me and you and report to governments and other interested parties. I get a monthly report with graphs that show my up/down speed, my latency, my lost packet percentage for each day of the month. Helpful for me, helpful for others.

For the NY AG, they will tell him the claimed vs actual performance of each ISP with lovely charts, graphs and great detail.

This costs me nothing. They sent me a 'whitebox' from the UK which is connected to my router. I'm pretty sure they aren't spying on my pron sessions, but don't really care. You can join the 440,000 of us in the program too.

Additionally, http://www.dslreports.com/ collects a great deal of information about ISPs. Mostly anecdotal, voluntarily submitted by site users. You may find this site useful too.

The FCC already requires broadband providers to do this. Most providers have or are implementing a product set called SamKnows to comply. You can read the FCC's 2014 report here or have a look at the FCC's Measuring Broadband America for more info about the program. No, I don't work for the FCC.

Sounds like the NY Attorney General's office is just making more work for ISPs when they could just ask the FCC for the info. Probably just bullying.

You can get some insight into your own performance by joining Samknows- a worldwide survey of internet performance from various ISPs ( https://www.samknows.com/ ). You'll receive a monthly report with data & charts that shows your up/down speeds and averages for every day that month as well as latency, packet loss, and disentropy for your setup. Actually I don't think disentropy has been discovered until this moment.

Additionally as a subscriber, you can see the big picture data at their web site as discussed in TFA. Joining is free and you get a 'whitebox' to connect to your system which reports to Samknows in UK. You know it's safe because it's white and they promise not to spy on you.

https://www.samknows.com/

I'm doing this because I'd like to think it helps the FCC keep the ISPs honest.

It probably also helps to ensure that *your* connection gets priority...

I have one of the boxes as well and ensuring that my ISP is motivated to give me good service was part of the reason I put it in. I also think that it is a good idea to have a FCC based performance monitoring infrastructure out there. While I don't think the program is monitoring user's activity, I am a bit on the paranoid side, so I don't run all my traffic through the box (which is a supported configuration.)

As an aside, I am on FIOS and according to the FCC monitor box, I almost always get my advertised speed. My gut feeling with day to day operation of my connection is that the FCC box is giving me real numbers.

https://www.samknows.com/

I have one of their boxes installed. It seems to provide a clear picture of overall performance with a monthly report. I'm doing this because I'd like to think it helps the FCC keep the ISPs honest.

PS - Card carrying Libertarian. No the FCC isn't spying on me, and yes regulation of ISPs is appropriate. If we've broken the free market by granting a local monopoly or limited oligopoly then heavy regulation is appropriate. Consumer choice is better, but this is the best we can do with what we have today.

didn't the fcc do something very similar with home broadband routers?

They gave out routers to selected volunteers around the country. The routers measured and sent data automatically. May be if they were to give out cheap Android phones, this would probably be more successful

I have one of these and the program is still running. Details of the program can be found here. As stated above, they gave out routers that perform intensive testing on your broadband connection over time. Looking at the website they are announcing a new mobile application, so I assume that it is an extension of the same overall program.

...and some smaller ISPs don't use it. Major ones do use it because of some "gentleman's agreement"- so screw them. I'm a happy customer of AAISP- they have usage limits which annoy me, but other than that service has been great so far. It looks like an ISP run by IT guys for IT guys.

If you are thinking about switching and want to check which ISPs are available in your area, check http://www.samknows.com/ It doesn't have all ISPs though and the smaller ones aren't listed.

--Coder

How do you find out what cabinets BT is rolling out to? this is something I'm interested in seeing as my exchange is enabled but my cabinet is not.

try this http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search
enter your postcode and then select your exchange. it will tell you what equipments your exchange has, what LLU ISPs are availabe and when FTTC/fibre will be available bud. great site.

For the most part, they're talking FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) here. Although the last hundred or so metres from the DSLAM is over copper coax & the users would need to upgrade to a VDSL compatible router.
You can check your local FTTC availability here.

I'm not sure where FTTH (Fibre to the Home) stands, beyond the current trail areas.

Depends where you are..

If you can get TalkTalk Plus, go for it. It's their FTTC offering. Our exchange isn't being updated for quite some time by the looks of things. Check out http://www.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_availability for anything you wanted to know about your exchange.

We've been with Tiscali/TalkTalk for a few years. The best part is the unlimited international calls package (we make good use of it). The DSL speeds have dropped over the past year though. We used to get a solid 3.5mbps down and 800kbps up, which is fine, but it's dropped to 2.5mbps down and 700kbps up... it's tough to stream video on two machines at once. Also, they actively DOS torrents between 6pm and midnight. I say actively DOS because throttling would imply that it's based on need and network congestion, but they just murder the download down to about 1-5k/sec. Upload is unaffected.

Sounds like a less useful version of the SamKnows white box already out.

Same thought here, but there are some things to be aware of:

"What effect will this have on my monthly download cap?

Our units involved in the FCC project transfer a large amount of data, which varies according to the speed of your connection. The usage on a 10Mbps connection will be around 20GB/month, and will likely be around 60GB on a 50Mbps connection. The amount that's downloaded is speed dependant (so a slower connection will use less traffic than a faster connection).

If you're on a product with a low cap then we'd advise against signing up, or at least informing us beforehand so that we can apply a different testing profile (we can run smaller speed tests on a per-device if necessary)."

"How long will the testing period last?

The initial testing period is scheduled to last three years."

http://www.testmyisp.com/faq.html

"Information collected
We may collect personal information about you which you give to us when you use our website, for example, to receive our exchange updates and regular website updates. For the purpose of the FCC and Ofcom studies we will collect your personal information and information about the performance of your internet connection."

"Your data
Users of SamKnows.com have certain rights under the your country’s Data Protection Legislation. You can, for instance, ask to be told what information we hold about you in our databases. SamKnows.com will provide you with all of the details that we hold about you, both online and offline, upon request. In order to request this information, please contact us by sending an email to team@samknows.com."

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/privacy

I have one of these devices. It's plugged into a port on a managed switch and doesn't see any of my traffic; basically it has access to the Internet connection and that's it.

There's a site at http://reporting.samknows.com/ that I can log into and see graphs of the test results, which are:

• Website load times in seconds
• Latency in milliseconds
• Packet loss in %
• Web Downloads Multi-Threaded in Mbps
• Video streaming in seconds to buffer and seconds of delay
• Downstream throughput in Mbps
• Upstream throughput in Mbps
• DNS response time in milliseconds
• Failed web requests in %
• Failed DNS requests in %
• RTP Packet Loss in %
• RTP Jitter in milliseconds

All these stats are graphed daily.

I have U-Verse, and the instructions state that with U-Verse you just plug the device into a switch port and plug nothing else into it. They probably don't want the U-Verse video traffic running through it. I also disabled its wifi, since it wasn't necessary.

I'm on their 50MBit package and can confirm the high speeds. Newsgroup downloads fly in at nearly 6MB/s. Also Ofcom didn't use speedtest.net to do their testing. They teamed up with samknows.com and installed modified routers between the customers own routers and their networks so they could do long term unbiased testing.

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/ofcom_and_samknows

If they had simply set up a proper crowd-sourcing system including actual speed tests plus enough marketing to get people to help fill it in, we would have ended up with actually useful data.

You mean the collaboration between SamKnows and the FCC? linky

They already are.

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/index.php

Can we trust that such statistical information is definitive when it originates from a private party that may very well have an agenda that doesn't include the truth or the Common Good? If you'd like some definitive information about the true (United) state of broadband, volunteer with the SamKnows project that was started by the FCC. They'll send you a special router that periodically samples your data rates (not your data). In about three years we'll have some very accurate statistics, and the participants allegedly get to keep the WNR3500L routers as a thank-you.

SamKnows is the crowd-sourced way to answer this question.

I put up with a 15GB/month cap (peak time, although I get 80GB/month with off-peak) with this crowd for £17.99 per month. And you can get much better caps/unlimited with other suppliers, but I prefer the smaller companies as they tend to be more reliable.

As for speed though, most broadband in the UK is supplied via BT's network, although increasingly people go with LLU (local loop unbundled) connections to get higher speeds. I believe in either case, the actual speeds you get largely depend on how far you are from your local exchange. And after that, it depends on what options are provided at that exchange.

You friend could enter their postcode or home telephone number here to find details on their local exchange and that'd help see what their options are. A 6GB/month cap is pretty tight though... but it depends on what you're paying I guess!

These folks - http://www.samknows.com/ - do a similar thing in the UK conencted to ofcom (similar body to FCC), and a look at the website indicates it actually probably is them.

(Note: This only applies to England & Wales, as all Scottish & Northern Irish telephone exchanges are broadband enabled)

This was happening a few years back, there aren't many places in England without broadband enabled exchanges now.

In no particular order you could:

1. use an LLU provider like TalkTalk or Sky (unfortunately this will often force you to go with the same provider for ADSL and they tend to tie you in for long periods with high cost/hassle to change away) - you can check who is present in your exchange using Samknows
2. use a so-called WLR (Wholesale Line Rental) provider. The only one I know of is the Post Office - this has the advantage that you aren't restricted as to your choice of ADSL provider
3. use Carrier Pre-Selection (though you still pay line rental to BT but no call charges) - there are a huge number of providers in this space
4. ditch the phone line altogether and go with a WiMax, 3G or satellite provider
5. go with Virgin Media (unfortunately even worse than BT) for phone and broadband

All except for using Virgin Media or WiMax/3G involve indreictly giving money to BT at least for use of their last-mile copper and floorspace but they all mean BT makes less money from you

If your exchange isn't unbundled you can't. You can check here:

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/llu-league.php

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/ is a good site for checking exchanges.

Sadly for me, Entanet don't have 8 meg available on my exchange but given that they have no throttling and their caps are well documented (30GB peak & 300GB off-peak rather than "unlimited" but with an undefined "fair use policy") I'm not complaining too much.

That's not flamebait - it's informative. Virgin aren't a good ISP by most measures. It's sort of the ITV, or Channel 5 of ISPs. If you're from the UK, you'll know what I mean.

Although I'm not sure about the claim about not running fibre to the kerb.

Perhaps all 100 of those people had registered an interest in signing up for ADSL service. Try looking your phone exchange (and theirs!) up at The Broadband Resource. See what your 'ADSL prereg' status is.

There is unlimited broadband, it's just expensive. From what I can deduce from comments by various ISPs, BT charges around 1 pound per month per GB of bandwidth. So Zen, for example, who charge 35 pounds for an
ADSL Max service with a 50 GB/month limit are probably not making a huge profit - they're relying on
many customers using less than the limit. They have a much more expensive unlimited "business" version.

ISPs can avoid BT's bandwidth charging by "unbundling" exchange lines: they put their own equipment in the exchange instead of going through BT's IP network. This would require a huge investment from the ISP to cover
the whole country, so is more commonly available in big cities, especially London.

You can find out whether any ISPs provide unbundled services in you area from http://www.samknows.com/broadband/search.php

Not quite the biggest coverage wise, I hasten to correct.
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/images/custommap s/blueyonder_300504.png compared to http://www.samknows.com/broadband/images/custommap s/enabled-exch-290804.png
I'd love cable, but will be restricted to a maximum of 2048/256 until BT / LLUing companies pull their thumbs out, or I move into a city.

Not quite the biggest coverage wise, I hasten to correct.
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/images/custommap s/blueyonder_300504.png compared to http://www.samknows.com/broadband/images/custommap s/enabled-exch-290804.png
I'd love cable, but will be restricted to a maximum of 2048/256 until BT / LLUing companies pull their thumbs out, or I move into a city.

This 3km limit is a load of cobbliers. The vast majority of lines will work just fine out to 7-8km, and some much further.

Last year BT did a large in the field trial of "extended reach" ADSL. Basically they hooked any line, no matter what the distance to the DSLAM and let the customer hook up their modem and saw what happened.

In most cases it just worked, and in the cases where it did not work, a visit from an engineer to fit a ADSL filter at the NTE5 (the master socket in the house) and the vast majority started working. In the UK the official estimate from BT is that about 0.2% of all telephone lines will not work with a 512kbps ADSL connection.

The result of the trial is that if you order a 512kbps ADSL line they hook you up regardless. If it does not work you get an engineer visit, and if you are in the unlucky 0.2% you get a refund.

Any ADSL provider enforcing distance limits needs their head examining. The biggest problem by far with long lines not working is the mess of extensions in the house. Solution filter the ADSL signal off at the master socket. What could be simpler.

See the following URL's for more information.

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/news.php?id=201
http://www.adslguide.org.uk/newsarchive.asp?item=1 814