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FCC Asks You To Test Your Broadband Speeds
AnotherUsername writes "The Federal Communications Commission is asking the nation's broadband and smartphone users to use its broadband testing tools to help the feds and consumers know what speeds are actually available, not just promised by the nation's telecoms. At http://www.broadband.gov/, users enter their address and test their broadband download speed, upload speed, latency, and jitter using one of two tests (users can choose to test with the other after one test is complete). The FCC is requiring the street address, as it 'may use this data to analyze broadband quality and availability on a geographic basis' (they promise not to release location data except in the aggregate). The agency is also asking those who live in a broadband 'dead zone' to fill out a report online, call, fax, email, or even send a letter. The announcement comes just six days before the FCC presents the first ever national broadband plan to Congress. Java is necessary to run the test." Lauren Weinstein points out some of the limitations in the FCC's testing methodology.
...I would like to help them out by providing the necessary data, but I'm not sure how comfortable I am with it...tinfoil hat and all that. Anyone planning on doing this? Why or why not?
Living With a Nerd
ie have the applet download some porn and measure how long it took!
Monstar L
It offered me the opportunity to rerun the test using Ookla as the host. That returned 25 megabit/sec down and 15 megabit/sec up -- which is what my connection is supposed to do.
They apparently need to implement some sort of queue, so that they don't saturate their own connection with too many simultaneous tests.
I would selectively throttle http://www.broadband.gov/ to 110% of the nominal bandwidth being paid for :)
I've tried the numerous broadband speed testers out there. Depending on where they are and who they are I have received results as low as 1/5th my actual bandwidth to twice as much. Sometimes I wondered if they were really trying at all. I generally judge my downstream on an average of what I get when I do an aptitude update ; aptitude upgrade as it seems to be inline with my actual advertised speeds. As far as downstream, I use my machine via SSH daily and the speeds I get through that. Pretty consistent.
This test was pretty much dead on accurate. I was 9993/975 (I have 10/1). The test was painless, easy, and the only thing I didn't particularly care for was the fact that they wanted your exact address. Wouldn't a simple portion of your address work well enough (e.g. 1xx Main St 90210) instead of the entire thing? Even if they were looking to aggregate the information by Zip+4 that should be enough, right? Who needs it any lower than that?
They want to determine coverage. You cannot derive street-level coverage of broadband from IP addresses easily. As it stands, one of the problems with broadband is that you do not get universally consistent coverage, for example, at home, the 3/768 DSL offering of one of the CLEC's failed testing and they provisioned it for 1.5/512 instead. Had we been half a mile closer to the CO, 3/768 likely would have worked. There will be someone else a little further out who can only get it as 768/384.
The real problem will be for the FCC to get enough people to run this to get a meaningful map. I doubt that they'll get enough for it to really matter.
Problem is, everybody has to grow up. You address is public already. CHILL. Run the damn test so the FCC can rape comcast and FIOS already so we get the speeds we are paying for!
Not sure I like unblocking an application that the government is sponsoring either.
Run a packet sniffer, and if you find anything particularly damning, there will be plenty of media outlets that will want to buy the story from you.
Honestly, between Comcast and the government, I know which of the two I'd trust.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
seeing as they don't ask for name or SSN or any other way of identifying you, it doesn't help whether they already have it or not. They need some way of tying results to location. If they asked for your name and phone number they could run it through the database they already have to determine your address as it is publicly known. but I think asking for that info would be worse. So they do the easiest thing and ask for address. Then they have a really easy job of tying results to location and the information you provided on its own is pretty harmless.
Come on, this is a chance for you to help the Government slam the telco's. Which many slashdotters have been asking for for ages. Do it.
I find it odd that, after the FCC has spent tens of billions of dollars promoting and installing broadband as a social service, they are now doing a study of who has broadband and where. It is almost as if they have been putting policy before the facts, a common Washington fault.