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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.
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 :)
So your goal to make sure they don't get any stimulus money for broadband by making it appear they do?
Anyways, it's hard to imagine they won't be discarding outliers, and (regardless of intentions) your dishonest result will be an outlier.
They don't ask for your name, just location, which I am ok with. It's a census year anyways and I plan on participating which is more of a threat to my privacy than a nameless broadband test.
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!
Might be handy to look up national debt as a percentage of GDP. From historical experience, where we are now is far from untenable--and Bush's tax cuts cost us a great deal more, in terms of the deficit, than Obama's budget.
Relax the "zomg deficit spending is teh baaaad" meme until we're out of the recession/under 10% unemployment, mkay?
Why? Well I'd like to see telco's held to their promised speeds as much as possible. If you are going to advertise one speed but only deliver a lower one, that's false advertising (or something).
This is why I ran their test and submitted the results.
If you go by my ISP's advertising you'll see they're offering 10 Mbps in my area. What you won't see is that regardless of which plan you sign up for, you're lucky if you can actually get 3 Mbps.
So, by running their test, they've got something more accurate than what the ISPs will tell them.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Why should I work for 60 hours a week busting my rear so that you can go to the library and read books thanks to my taxes? I only buy books - I have no need for a library.
Why should I work for 60 hours a week busting my rear so that you can drive on improved roads thanks to my taxes? I work from home and have a big car - I have no need for pothole-free roads.
Why should I work for 60 hours a week busting my rear so that you can send your child to a school funded by my taxes? I have no children, and if I did they would go to a private school.
Why should I work for 60 hours a week busting my rear so that you can be assured of eating safe food, thanks to the FDA's use of my taxes? I have my own farm - I have no need for food regulation.
Why should I work for 60 hours a week busting my rear so that you can get medicare thanks to my taxes?
Why should I work for 60 hours a week busting my rear so that you can be safe thanks to the military funded by my taxes?
Why should I work for 60 hours a week busting my rear so that you can drink soda made from HFCS, subsidized by my taxes?
Why should I work for 60 hours a week busting my rear so that you can have onion routing, thanks to DARPA funded by my taxes?
Under Obama's existing and projected budget, the debt increased by about $25 trillion during 2009, $15 trillion in 2010, and $10 trillion for the years 2011, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. Look up Obama's budget - it's there in plain balck and white.
Yes--due largely to the unfunded liabilities that the Bush administration incurred before Obama even took office. See also: Medicare part D, estate tax repeal, Bush's tax cuts for the top 1%. Their full cost is playing out *now*.
And you're assigning a numerical value per household, which is at best tangential to the issue of the debt/GDP ratio. See here and the plots here.
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.
That's exactly why you bust your butt for 60 hours a week. You do it so that he sits in his parent's basement and gets high scores on Call of Duty instead of going out and mugging you in Central Park. Every large society is going to have some dead weight. It is a problem that cannot be ignored. Either you provide social services for the dead weight, or the dead weight turns to crime, or you euthanize the dead weight. Personally, I hate crime and I don't want to even think about the moral and procedural issues of deciding who gets to live. Thus, I pay my taxes. I don't like it, but it's the only solution we have that works.