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The Fastest ISPs In the US
adeelarshad82 writes "PCMag recently put Internet browsing speeds to the test to see which ISP was the fastest. The results were based on a quarter million tests run between May 1, 2009, and April 30, 2010, by more than 6,000 users. The tests were carried out using SurfSpeed, which takes into account the complete, real-world download time of a web page to a browser. According to the results, Verizon's FiOS took the top spot as the nation's fastest ISP, with a SurfSpeed score of 1.23 Mbps. Interestingly though, of all the regions where Verizon's FiOS is available, its dominance is only seen in the northeast and the west, whereas cable service from Cox and Comcast won out in the southern region. Moreover, cable through Cox and Optimum Online beat AT&T's fiber optic service in the nationwide results, with SurfSpeeds of 1.14Mbps, 1.12Mbps, and 1.06Mbps respectively. The worst results mostly consisted of DSL providers, bottoming out at 544 Kbps from Frontier and going up to 882Kbps by Earthlink. Other interesting facts noted in the test were that broadband penetration was highest in Rhode Island and lowest in Mississippi, while the average Internet bill was highest in Delaware and lowest in Arkansas."
Is this a joke? I thought that with a fibre cable, you could get at least 10 Mbps, minimum.
I'm more interested in cap numbers these days
For best results, avoid doing stupid things.
Is there any metric for which Mississippi is not the worst state?
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
I would rather measure the available bandwidth with, say, google services, network latency and a few round trip timings with known hosts.
This sounds more serious to me than anything else.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Even though Speakeasy was slashdot recommended, a lot of my geek friends used it, I had to cut them this year.
I never got the advertised speed out of them for what I was paying. My business was close to the CO, but when I'd complain their answer would always be "Replace the wire going from the pole into your building"
Why should I have to do that? I'm old, I hurt when I fall. NO thanks.
So after 6 years with SE, I called up Comcast. They sent an installer who made sure everything was working right. My speeds were out of sight, 20mbps down and 5mbps up. My bill is $20@mo less too.
DSL can compete, but they have to give up a little margin for better customer service.
I came just to say this.
Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.
Any more I find network latency to be alot more important to me than the actual throughput of my connection. Being able to use my remote service software without as much lag is proving to be more useful to me than being able to download all the porn on the internet at 20 Mbps. I am quite happy with my current provider for that.
Personally I'd rather have my idiots at home glued to the TV than out doing idiotic things
Yeah, I get 10Mbps with Charter. I think they might offer a 1Mbps service, but who would pay for 1 Mbps cable internet and how is the average under that? Most people I know living around here get the 5 Mbps service.
I put the 't' in electrical engineering.
VERY good question. QWest in Portland, Oregon is currently advertising 40 Mbps. There is, however, very fine print saying "Connection speeds are based on sync rates."
Of course, QWest knows that most people won't understand that. QWest is saying that the advertised speeds are only the speed that the customer's modem synchronizes with QWest's equipment. The actual speed that QWest supplies data over the internet can be anything QWest likes, with those fixed synchronization speeds.
The same ads call the service "Fiber Optic Fast Internet". The fine print says, "Fiber optics exists only from the neighborhood terminal to the internet." That means NOT to your house or business.
The quotes are transcribed from an ad I have on my desk.
Despite using bandwidth units (Mbps), their "SurfSpeed" "benchmark" actually depends heavily on latency, as it tries to simulate a web browser fetching resources sequentially from a site as it discovers them.
Found this report analyzing the article and the benchmark: http://blog.ookla.com/2010/06/23/the-fastest-isps-not-quite/
More than 10 years ago, I had an ADSL Internet connection with a 1.5 Mb connection speed. (384 Kbps upload) Now, some 10 years later, we still find that the *average* is only just slightly faster than 1 Mbps?
The Internetz is right - the nerds HAVE won!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
So my 100Mbps line only gets around 1.12 Mbps? Or did the just have a terrible sample size?
This is interesting, considering the ad-hoc testing I did recently. I'm a Comcast customer in northern De, and DSL reports' speed test consistently gives me about 8Mbps down bs 1-2Mbps up.
My parents, I. Southeast PA, have FIOS. For giggles, I did the same DSL reports test, and got about the same results.
Do any other slashdotters have similar experiences?
I would like to know how much more spam they are getting now. Nice data harvester. I knew the article was a fraud when it said,"...cable and phone companies compete to provide fast connections..." What they possibly compete for are exclusive franchises.
I bet if you block the ad servers, your speed would double
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Oh wait, I already knew th <carrier disconnected>
I'm having trouble believing that this test is useful for anything, if I'm understanding their methodology.
They should be giving TOTAL TIME to download a web page and all its assets, including DNS lookups. That's the only measurement that matters for web browsing.
Transfer rate is such a small importance to most people -- as an example, their slowest transfer rate (Frontier DSL) would download one of their ~21KB review pages in about 31ms. Their fastest (Verizon FIOS)? About 14ms. The difference is negligible, and I bet most people will take far longer to perform DNS lookups and initiate the connection than it takes to actually transmit the data. Transfer rate is not the right measurement.
A year and a half ago, 100 times that speed was considered good and in a year and a half from now Korea expects to have ONE THOUSAND times that fucking speed. I know people in US states who can still only connect with a fucking 33.6Kbaud modem.
I'm currently in Switzerland. And I can assure that ISPs here don't give a rat's ass about neutrality. Most have nice HTTP speeds, but suck at everything else, especially P2P. I wish someone goes about measuring speed including non-HTTP traffic in all the planet if possible. I'm sure many in America would agree.
When you have a cap? ( or worse cap + overage charge ) It just means you get there faster.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I live on Brazil, a Third-world country. And i have a working 3Mbps download / 1Mbps upload. Houston, the north-americans have a problem!
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
No kidding on that, only 1 choice (other than cell providers) and that's Comcast, and it costs me $67.xx for 8to12mbps/3mbps service. I'm not really worried about speed at home, just wish cheaper, I'd be happy with a 3mbps service for $19.95 if someone offered it. I just use it to remotely log into servers, check security cameras, read slashdot. (ie. surf porn) Meanwhile across the border in MD, I get Comcast Business for $74.95 and get 32mbps/8mbps service. So 4 times faster for $7 more a month. (and no business class isn't available at my home)
I noticed that web pages were loading the info-line at the bottom of my browser was going out to an ad server. The page would not load hardly anything until the ad server finished. So I installed an ad blocker and the speed to load a page increased quite a bit. There are some web sites I support and I give them a pass and let their ads come through.
Did we take into account all the bittorrent clients flooding the upstream and choking the downstream? No? O'Rly!
They must have measured the time it takes since the browser makes the request until you get the full page back... that's why they got such low numbers. So, they ignore things like RTT and TCP Slow Start. We're not talking about sync speed here.
(No, I didn't RTFA)
As everyone has pointed out, this test in this article really isn't measuring the bandwidth that your ISP is providing; it's like saying "let's see how fast you can run - oh, by the way, you'll be wearing this heavy backpack, dodging traffic." They say it's real world surf performance, but there are so many variables at work here that it really isn;t a very useful metric.
You can use the JAVA or Flash based speed tests at places like www.broadbandreports.com (which is a great site BTW if you aren't familiar for it) those tests are fairly accurate - but not always.
The best, most accurate way I have found to test whether I am getting the speeds I am supposed to, is to use newsleecher and download a bunch of binaries from my premium newsgroup provider. I use Giganews, and I have been really happy with them, but I assume the other top tier newsgroup providers are similar..... With most premium news providers, you get multiple connections and most of the good ones can max out your connection at anytime, provided you are using multiple connections.
I'm sure that most people here know this, but if not: - to figure out if you're getting what you're supposed to, once you're as certain as you can be that you are maxing out your connection, take youy average download speed in megabytes and multiply it by 8.
I live in Philly and have a 22 megabit at home, and 50 megabit at work.
When downloading at home I get about 2.8 megabytes/sec.....when downloading at work I get about 6.2 megabits per second.......so 2.8 x 8 = 22.4 and 6.2 x 8 = 49.6 So all is well...if I notice that something seems to be off, or slow - the first thing I do is queue up some binaries and check....
The reality is that no one is experiencing speeds anywhere near to what their ISP claims to offer, at least not when it comes to Web surfing. This isn't entirely the ISP's fault. The ISP's claimed throughput rates are for sustained downloads of an individual file. Web pages are typically made up of several files: the HTML code, graphics, Flash elements, and so forth. For each file, there's latency, essentially the time it takes from when your computer requests the element and when the Web site's server starts sending it to you. And then there are all the vagaries of the Internet as data from the Web site hops from router to router down to your computer. This is why, when ISPs advertise download speeds, they're only referring to downloads directly from their own servers.
The claimed throughput rates are generally a maximum and may include a burst maximum. The maximum can be reached on a file that is a few hundred KB as are many components of modern over-loaded websites. The real problem here isn't this phantom "latency" as latency isn't calculated into speed determination. That may affect very slightly your browsing experience, unless you're connecting to a server on the other side of the planet. The last bit here is also completely incorrect.
The internet isn't just a "pay for a speed and you get it everywhere" device. Your ISP sells you a connection which has a maximum of X Mbps. When you request some file from some remote server, how fast you get it is determined in part by your connection speed, but also by the speed at which the server is willing to or is capable of sending it. I have 10Mbps which I verify as I consistently download at 1100+ KB/s. But I often find downloading files (be it large images, installers, or even other web related files) from various web hosts at anywhere from 20KB/s to 250KB/s, I rarely find one that's willing to go over 300. It's not your connection that's at fault, it's the bandwidth limit set by the server itself. The added latency on a badly built website may be ~100-200 ms, and for web browsing this is completely acceptable. What's not acceptable is when you connect to a webpage that may require ~1MB of data to be downloaded for rendering to be complete when the server won't serve you more than 50KB/s, in that case it can take up to 20-30 seconds and appear "slow."
Run a bandwidth test at a place like www.speedtest.net. It'll test it with a server that has a very large bandwidth and with a transfer that'll be uncapped. If the speed there, to a server most likely not owned by your ISP, matches or exceeds your ISP's advertisement, then you're fine. If it doesn't, consistently, you're being screwed. Don't base "my internet connection is slow" complaints on the fact that websites and files aren't being downloaded at an insane speed like you expect.
I live in Japan. /wins
(On a serious note, I get ADSL 50Mbps for about $60 a month in a small Japanese city. I could also get a fiber connection if I wanted to for slightly more)
What matters a lot is the time of day, especially on comcast. I had a comcast 12Mbs line and indeed I could get 8MB/sec in the middle of the day. but from 6pm to midnight it was normally 800kbs with bursts of twice that if you were lucky and sometimes droughts too.
Basically when I was home, so was everyone else.
What comcast does not advertise is that they will sell you an economy 1.5Mbs line for half the price of their cheapest "high speed internet". Since all you can actually get is 1Mbs if you are like me it'sall you need.
downgrade today and get what youre paying for.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Speed? Is speed the only criterion to judge an ISP? I do not think so. Provided the speed is reasonable, with regards to the price and other similar offers, there are a lot more things that matter for an ISP. A few at random:
- How often do their systems break down and leave you without network access?
- If a router breaks down at 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning, do you have to wait until 9 a.m. on Monday to hope someone will fix it?
- And do you have any information during or after the breakdown, or are you left wondering it it will happen again any moment?
- If you call the hotline, do you get a nice music and an incompetent droid reading a checklist, or a competent technician?
- Do they offer cool services, like native IPv6 or reverse-DNS customization (and IPv6 reverse-DNS delegation)?
- Can you get someone's attention for unusual problems, like your IP range getting into a spam blacklist?
As for me, I am happy to pay a little more and have a little less max bandwidth to be on the good side for most of these points.
They say "unlimited", then they kick you out if you actually dare to download more than 100G. And they lie about it in pre-sales: http://www.flickr.com/photos/clintjcl/76331293/
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
They claim "unlimited", then they kick you out if you actually dare to download more than 100G in a month. And they lie about it in pre-sales: http://www.flickr.com/photos/clintjcl/76331293/ -- And oh, they threatened me with a $300 early termination fee for THEM terminating ME, they told me they'd waive it only if I didn't talk about it online. Hah.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
...I had a couple of friends stop by for a taste test. I blindfolded them, laid out a pear, an apple, an orange, a kiwi, a mango, and a banana, and asked each of them which tasted closest to a pear.
Wouldn't you know it...the pear came out #1! Closely followed by the apple. For some reason, the lowly orange ended up last. I'm thinking about writing a blog article about this. Might even make Slashdot...
Qwest might be slightly underrated. I am not sure how recent this survey is or rather how recent PCMag claims. About 10 months ago, Qwest began rolling out FTTN (Fibre To The Neighborhood) in much of the Phoenix and Tucson greater metro areas. Each subdvision has a fibre junction. My ADSL2+ is quite literally 500 wire feet from the fibre box and I get some really good speeds. I hit a download rate of 2.36MB/s. This was incredible for DSL!
and getting a kick out of these replies.
You guys are so CUTE with your little download speeds!
Check yours with http://www.bandwidthplace.com/
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
You could try Business cable internet service instead. Anyone can buy it, it costs a little more than double, but instead of speedboost it is just twice as fast all the time. You can also add multiple IPs to your account.
People often complain about various things in the context of gaming, without every questioning if what they are doing is even appropriate for gaming.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Holland is not the only one, there are more countries with even much more speed: Japan (Nippon Telegraph) has 1Gbps (FTTH) and just for $40 in 2009.
And consider:
And why should the US citizens care about the speed of their bandwidth i hear you ask... Fast communications will encourage more employees and employers to make greater use of teleworking. This can deliver benefits both to the firm and the worker, as well as the wider economy, society and the environment. I would day instead of bailing out AIG, consider a bandwidth upgrade that put's America out of the digital equivalent of the stone age !!
It's pathetic speed is still a metric, Koreans and Japanese are realistically pulling down 30+ MBPS.
We're way too far behind to catch up except with better technology (VDSL, Fios, etc).
In the short term though we need lower latency, the latency is high because of packet sniffing and low consumer demand.
We do need it though, clearly cell prices aren't dropping and VOIP is the only way out (unless we band together to buy a chunk of spectrum)... so we'll see I suppose!
Is it 1.23 Mbps or 1.23 MBps ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bandwidths
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
3.6mbps is the national average in the uk, including rural areas, and the uk is far from broadband leader.. http://www.ofcom.org.uk/media/features/brspeeds
You're that binspammer that pops up occasionally with those way too long, copy and paste...whatever you wanna call that there... What the hell are you selling anyway?
I'll be right back. Let me tell the guys you're here. I'm sure they all want to say hi...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Wow - Browsers don't parse HTML?
HOSTS files don't let me replace content with a tab to click on to view (eg: videos).
My browser caches DNS requests, you insensitive clod!
Hard-coded HOSTS files also crap out maintenance interval and fail-over schemes, as well as client-IP-based server redirection to the fastest server for that location.
My browser caches DNS requests, you insensitive clod!
HOSTS files are easily altered on unsuspecting users. Been there, done that, works like a charm when one of your friends complains about her husband spending too much time on porn sites.
HOSTS files also allow an easy way to compromise machines on a per-domain-request basis.
FALSE.
Been false for more than a decade. The Russians aren't that stupid.
Simple solution - stop the BS spam :-)
I'm not sure why you're sharing irrelevant information, but thanks. (Cable co? huh? DSL isn't run on cable.)
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Your hosts file crap has been thoroughly debunked elsewhere. Honestly, nobody gives a sh*t any more - the Internet has evolved since 1995. Your "solution" is more of a problem than it's worth. Really, the world has changed. Get over it. Learn something new for a change.
Besides, those of us who don't use Windows don't give a crap. We use our hosts file to configure our local networks if we're too lazy to do it via assignments at our router, and a few hard-coded external entries for when there's a dns failure. For the rest, dns works fine - and if we don't trust it, we can always run our own.
Do like I did - work for the Russians for a few years. Impossible is just another word for "okay, your job is to find 3 different ways to do it," because when something is "impossible", there's an economic and technological advantage ripe for the plucking.
Problem is, you wouldn't get past the first interview.
You can't even figure out ONE way to remotely detect the use of a hosts file - you're just retarded. Go fling your monkey poo elsewhere. Or keep on - nobody else cares.
Or I'll tell you what - how much are you willing to PAY to learn how? Put your money where your mouth is. The price is $6k.
So pay up or shut up, because there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. But now the price is $8k, not $6k - and it will only go up, not down.
That is entirely meaningless to the customer, since the customer only cares about the speed with which data is delivered over the internet, which is less that 2 Megabits per second, as the PC Magazine story said.