Slashdot Mirror
Global "Last Mile" Performance Stats Going Public
Ookla, the company behind Speedtest.net, Pingtest.net, and the bandwidth testing apps deployed at many ISPs, has gone public with Net performance stats from 1.5 billion users (and counting). Their Net Index page displays download speed, upload speed, and connection "quality" from the EU and the G8, to countries, worldwide cities, and US states. Beginning today, the company is also making detailed (anonymized) data available to academics. "Ookla will also start surveying users about how much they pay for broadband and how much bandwidth they were promised by their ISPs. The results of those questions will go into building a Value Index, which will show how much people around the world pay per megabit-per-second for Internet access. In addition, by collecting postal codes from Speedtest users, Ookla hopes to map broadband service to local economic conditions, Apgar said. The Speedtest data could give the US government far more information to work with in setting priorities for its National Broadband Plan..."
The Speedtest data could give the US government far more information to work with in setting priorities for its National Broadband Plan..."
I wonder if we'll give away billions to ISPs without getting anything in return again.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
What's the story there?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
US is not in the top 10, couple of cities in the top 50 of those for download, none in upload? Is the USA really that far behind the curve, or is there another explanation?
Oh, yeah, we definitely won that Cold War.
No, I think we lost the Corporate America looks only to squeeze the most profit out of consumers war. I expect the push for short term investor returns overrides the long term investment required for providing good service.
I'm pretty sure this study wildly and unpredictably overestimates the average available broandband speed. Not too many people know how to test their download bandwidth, and only people with specific need to check their bandwidth will do so. It also doesn't differentiate between mobile and fixed broadband speeds, which should affect the numbers significantly.
All in all, I really don't think this means anything. It could be possible to use it as a comparative tool by assuming that the proportion of internet savvy geeks is the same across the world, but I have no idea if that assumption is correct.
I just hope that no politician is going to use this data for anything serious.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
$100/month apparently.
The top 3 US States were:
*Delaware (15.56)
*Rhode Island (15.21)
*Massachusetts (15.01)
Bottom 3 US States:
*Montana (5.02)
*Idaho (4.29)
*Alaska (2.27)
The addresses are Speedtest.net and Pingtest.net. And yeah, I checked to make sure I got the capitalization correct.
speedtest.com is a squatter, and pingtest.com redirects to bandwidthplace.com, which looks awfully shady. Whois says it was registered by proxy, the Better Business Bureau has no record on that phone number, and neither does Google.
first a nugget of fact, then some commentary:
1. When we moved to Portland, Oregon, we had Qwest come out to the house to rewire one of the phone jacks because the mooks who hooked it up to the outside world crosswired the connections- we didn't even have dial tone. After the tech fixed the problem, first thing he did after confirming DSL sync was to run a speed test. I asked him if that was SOP and he said that he was trained to always run a speed test for new customers- he suggested that it might be part of an upsell but that he doesn't like selling so he never comments (oh, you're only getting 750k down, but you're in an area where 7/1 MB service is available... did you know you can upgrade for just $3.50/month!???? ...). YMMV but if this is SOP for Qwest on installs, there is one population of regular testers.
2. I agree with earlier commenters- there is probably a self-selecting sampling bias.
3. Because of #2, any "data" they collect is probably very skewed towards computer-savvy users who are demanding higher-speed services and using their website to check if the service they're getting matches what they're paying for. Unless there are some details of the methodology that they're not telling us about, the survey probably reports higher bandwidth than actually is delivered to the majority of people with net access in those cities. If it's just a simple aggregation & average of whoever decides to click on speedtest.com from inside a given city's IP range, well, that probably tells you something... but it's probably not a good proxy for a complete picture of "last mile" connectivity.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
Eh, my iPhone gets better speeds in [45 miles nearby large town] than it does on my DSL. #JustSayin ...
2^3 * 31 * 647
The reason to have high bandwidth is to do cool stuff with it. 14kbps was fine for email, then 384 for average web, then 1.5M for Napster and gaming, 3 Mbps seems to be plenty to run YouTube and BitTorrent.
The carriers that want to sell me high-speed connections are doing it so they can sell me television, and I've got plenty of television already. When Napster was new, the public position of the cable modem companies was "Content Thieves are EEEVIL", but if you talked to them privately, most of them had enough clue to say "Dude, Napster's the reason people are buying cable modems, we love it!" But these days they don't have anything new and cool to offer, and they're cluelessly talking about bandwidth caps and no-servers-at-home policies to make sure nobody develops anything new or cool.
So what are you doing with your bandwidth that's interesting? I've heard that old people in Korea can use it to look at video from their local grocery store to see what's on sale, but I haven't heard of anything else interesting.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Well, maybe 3Mbps may be enough for Youtube, but it's not enough to preload a Youtube movie while I listen to KRTU and both Bittorrent and aptitude run in the background - especially if mine is not the only PC in the house.
But my problem is not downstream (10 Mbps is enough for now), my problem is upstream; I have a home server that hosts my movies so I can watch them when I'm anywhere with my laptop, but my upstream can't even keep up with DVD quality playback. I always have to wait for it to download for a very long time before I can start playing, and meanwhile I'm killing all the internet access for people in my house.
Dilbert RSS feed
That's some very excellent insight.
- - + - + - - +
I don't think you're asking me, but let's assume you are. Most of our family doesn't live here, so I would be using it to keep in touch with them. Additionally I do web development, and would love to be able to work from home.
However, that doesn't fit the mold of what you're describing, because that's a consumer centric purpose. You're describing "what does the vendor get out of it". Because that's what they are everywhere but the US. Vendors. Here, they're providers. Slight difference of name, the difference being in other places the intent is to sell pipe, because there's lots of competition. I visited the south of France last year for two weeks, and I could tell that there was no dearth of competition for home IP service in that short time frame.
However, here in the US, most localities are lucky to have two competing providers (granted, using separate tech often so that each tech only has one local provider).
I like the point. I'm gonna have to remember to bring that up more often in this discussion when I have it with other people.
2^3 * 31 * 647
I keep having that reaction... Did you not READ the fine article?
The speed test is pretty much "point to point". In my neighbourhood, it is between Scarborough Ontario and Markham Ontario (Canada).
The speed tester automatically picks the nearest server for you, even.
So, it DOESN'T MATTER HOW BIG THE COUNTRY IS. Peering arrangements shouldn't be coming into it either.
By all that is holy, I would expect San Jose to have some damn fine speeds.
I am embarrassed that the Scarborough speeds are so slow.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
So then compare Canada with the Northeast Corridor (Boston, New York City, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Delaware, Baltimore, DC, Richmond).
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.