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NY Attorney General Wants Public To Report Broadband Speeds (reuters.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the getting-what-you-pay-for dept.

An anonymous reader writes: New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating ISP speed and service claims. He's asked consumers to help by testing their broadband speeds and reporting the findings. "New Yorkers should get the Internet speeds they pay for. Too many of us may be paying for one thing, and getting another," Schneiderman said. "By conducting these tests, consumers can uncover whether they are receiving the Internet speeds they have paid for."

2 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Have Netflix host the speed test by SirKron · · Score: 4, Interesting

    To stop ISP's from cheating have Netflix host the speed test.

  2. Re:YMMV by meerling · · Score: 4, Informative

    And if you are using a known speed tester and haven't obfuscated the address, some of the providers will give a priority to the speed test so it looks like you are getting better speeds than you actually do.

    I tested that with my provider many times over years. (Probably a couple of times a month, it wasn't a schedule, just when I thought about it.)
    Known major speed tester, 38
    Obfuscated known major speed tester, 18
    Relatively unknown speed tester, 18.5
    Obfuscated relatively unknown speed tester, 18.5

    There has been minor variance in the results, but no more than about 8% appx.
    I'm not in New York, and I haven't tested i in 2 years (I figured the 6 years I did test was more than enough), but I doubt it's any different over there since nation wide corporations tend to have the same policies and standard hardware & scripts everywhere.

    And if anyone hasn't figured it out, if they know you're testing them, they play nice, the rest of the time, you their bitch.