var json_comments = new Array("
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Hooray4Zoidberg
September 30, 2009 7:25 PM
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I get the feeling this is just going support the ISP's current claim gamers and file sharers are causing this lag and that bandwidth caps and blocking certain file sharing protocols are necessary to perform as advertised.

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3 replies
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xredgambit
October 1, 2009 3:30 AM
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@Hooray4Zoidberg: My question is how do you know. Internet is fast, the only real speed test is downloading. So what are you downloading you pirate?


But really, what are you downloading?

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liquidnumb
September 30, 2009 8:15 PM
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@Hooray4Zoidberg: Those are still customers and while Comcast is certainly not above tearing them down, I think they would prefer to target the third party services first.

eg 'It's not our fault our customers can't get 5MB/s download speeds at website.com, they just can't send you data that fast. Because they didn't get Comcast.\"

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valthun
September 30, 2009 8:47 PM
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@liquidnumb: Except that countries such as Korea have a huge broadband market at speeds well above ours and they also have the largest online gaming market in the world. WoW is a small fry when Korean games are thrown in the mix. Those titles are 99% ignored when the Western world talks subscriber base for games.

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sonneillon
September 30, 2009 9:46 PM
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@valthun: Lineage is big, but WoW has surpassed it, but lineage used to be the big dogs on the block for like a decade.
[www.mmogchart.com]

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Kamidari
September 30, 2009 7:27 PM
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I actually just tested my Comcast speed the other day, since they sent me a leaflet saying that they doubled the speed to 12mbit for no additional charge. It actually tested a bit faster than advertised, so I was happy. I have no doubt it has slowdowns from time to time, but overall, it has been very good.

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JiminyChristmas
October 1, 2009 2:07 AM
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@Kamidari: I have Comcast as well. When I first opened the account at my current address 4 years ago they advertised speeds up to 6mbps, then they increased it to 8, now they say it's 15.

My download speeds almost always test out at 1.5-4.0mbps.

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Kamidari
October 1, 2009 2:06 PM
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@JiminyChristmas: Well, I tested last night, and downloaded a gigabyte file from easynews. DownThemAll reported the average speed to be 1.51MB/s, which is exactly what I'd expect with 12mbit cable, so it's still testing to spec.

I am in one of the areas where comcast has fiber to the neighborhoods, and offers 50mbit access, so maybe the infrastructure here is better than other places.

Oh well, guess I'll just count myself as one of the lucky ones. ;)

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Saboth
September 30, 2009 8:47 PM
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@Kamidari:

That is a temporary speed. It slows down over time, and the power boost only lasts like 30 seconds anyhow.

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madog
September 30, 2009 7:55 PM
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@Kamidari: What time during the day or night you tested it, how many people in your neighborhood use the same cable, and how far you are from the dispatch or routing center all factor in as well. Try running the same test after school is out at around 3pm and try at around 6 when people are home from work. Then compare that to a later time at night to see if you are actually getting that speed all of the time. The problem I see is that the cable companies advertise highway mileage if as though that's how the vehicle always performs.

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LeChiffre
October 1, 2009 3:29 PM
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@madog: My speed always slows when school begins. I just accept that as a part of life. If in the end I can play \"Call of Duty\" and \"Il 2 Sturmovik\", I am happy. (and also watch Hulu).

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Kamidari
September 30, 2009 8:07 PM
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@madog: It was reasonably prime-time - a little while after I got home from work in the evening, and had checked the mail. I have no idea about the other factors, though... I don't plan to poll my neighbors. ;)

@anonymousryan: Yeah, I think speedboost is why it ended up higher than expected, but I don't know of a good way to factor that out.

Maybe I'll try snagging a large file from EasyNews this evening to see how it goes. It was usually pretty close to advertised speed when I had 6mbit cable (800kB/s), but I haven't downloaded anything since the speed increase.

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anonymousryan
September 30, 2009 7:52 PM
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@Kamidari: Actually a lot of the cable companies are advertising some sort of \"speed burst\" which is a temporary speed boost for maybe the first 10 seconds. I can get as high as 20Mb/s (2500kB/s) when a download first starts but then it usually slips down to around 9Mb/s (1200kB/s) which is slower than the advertised 12Mb/s (1500kB/s). I get around 15Mb/s from the speed testing sites.

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What The Geek
September 30, 2009 7:27 PM
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I would really like to know where these numbers came from and how they were obtained. Not to say that I don't believe broadband companies are lying (they are) about speeds, but 50-80%? That seems high. It's worth noting that if you run a speed test from a computer connected to the modem via an ethernet cable, the speed reported will be accurate. If, however, the test is done over wifi, the results are often not representative of the actual speed of the modem. Further, the modem itself can play a part in lower-than-expected speeds. For example, I know someone who purchased a cable modem in order to get a deal on service. The service was 6mbps down, but the modem supplied was only capable of 3mbps. The service was actually as it was advertised, but the modem created a bottleneck.

I'm curious to see how all of this plays out.

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ktetch
October 1, 2009 2:23 PM
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@What The Geek: OFCOM (the UK version of the FCC) did a similar series of tests earlier this year. They concentrated on people with 8Mbit packages, and found the average actual speed of those packages, was around 3.4Mbit download.

They tested it using 2000 people across the uk, and issuing them an automated testing box (basically a linksys router with new firmware that performed tests every hour)

The methodology is well documented, and I'll be going over the FCC reports closely.

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zlionsfan
September 30, 2009 11:07 PM
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@What The Geek: Yeah, if I didn't know what was going on, I could definitely say \"dude, that's totally my situation, at least 50% of the time my speeds are way low!\"

But I do know the issue in my case. On the laptop in the living room, the wireless connection is usually solid, but occasionally I have problems with it. I'm running Vista, so insert joke here. I spend a lot of time in Firefox and make regular visits to Facebook, and I don't usually close my browser ... so depending on what's happened recently and how long everything's been up, my download speed on the laptop can be as bad as one-third the advertised speed.

However, the first time I noticed this, I went into the computer room, checked the PC that plugs directly into the router, and its download speed was fine. After combinations of closing/restarting/whatever, the speed on the laptop was back to normal, and in the future, the same steps pretty much work every time.

So in my case, the vast majority of the time, the issue is with me and not my ISP. For some people (a lot?), if similar things are happening, they're not going to know why, and they'll blame the ISP.

Not to say there aren't problems with ISPs, but as you suggest, it isn't always the ISP.

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bobert
September 30, 2009 7:55 PM
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@What The Geek: As mentioned below, I'm getting 26% of the throughput I'm paying AT&T for. This was tested over 100-base-T Ethernet connection from an iMac to the cable modem, with no other computers on the network.

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Oranges w/ Cheese hates what Christmas has become
September 30, 2009 7:37 PM
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@What The Geek: Your observations about wi-fi are probably correct, and since many people are using laptops now, I wouldn't be suprised if this is one reason people experience lower speeds. However, I know that my personal internet can experience good and bad periods. I think it averages out overall.

Also people may be misunderstanding that though during a speed test they get 5mbits downstream, they aren't getting download speeds like that.

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Rachacha
September 30, 2009 8:40 PM
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@Oranges w/ Cheese ontopofBrocolli: Taking it to the other extreme on WiFi, what happens when you have a 25MBbs or 100Mbs download connection (Verizon Fios is offering this). In the real world, I think you would be hard pressed to find a webserver that is connected to that large a pipe where you would ever see such speeds (Amazon and Google may be the exception), so when you hit a web server with a 100Mbs pipe they are going to trickle the data to you at a few Mbs upload speed.


I personally have a 25Mbs down/15Mbs up from Verizon that I recently upgraded from a 5Mbs down provision (part of a tripple play package...sure, I'll pay less money for faster service). I have noticed no significant difference in speed in my daily surfing, a moderate increase in speed when downloading files (nowhere near 5 times as fast), but I have seen a huge improvement in upload speeds. When I go to speed testing sites, I am usually at 23Mbs down and 14.5Mbs up.

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wrjohnston19283
October 1, 2009 12:42 AM
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@Rachacha:

I've used 6mbit cable, 3 mbit DSL and 1.5mbit DSL. Browsing - all sites load the same. Youtube and such, all the same on 6 and 3 mbit (haven't tried on 1.5) - MAYBE a faster startup with 6mbit, but the quality is the same on both.

You do notice a difference downloading large files, but I don't do enough of that to justify that enormous hassle of dealing with comcast.

It's like having a car that does 200 mph - if all the other cars on the road are doing 65, you'll be doing 65 too.

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What The Geek
September 30, 2009 8:59 PM
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@Rachacha: I actually have a 20/5 package, and I find that speed tests generally show I'm getting what I pay for. As for downloads from various sites, it really depends on the pipe the site has - if I'm downloading something from, let's say, Microsoft, I damn near reach the top of my down pipe. If I'm downloading from, let's say, file planet, I get much slower downloads. Again, this is due to the server side bandwidth. A good measure of your real world speeds is bit torrent. When downloading a large linux distro via torrent, I find I either reach my max speed, or come very close to it. This is due to the nature of bit torrent - you're downloading a little bit from a bunch of people, and if you've got your torrent software set up right, you can pretty much max out your connection on a widely seeded torrent.

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What The Geek
September 30, 2009 7:40 PM
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@Oranges w/ Cheese ontopofBrocolli: actually I think the bigger problem is that people don't understand the difference between a bit and a byte.

@wrjohnston19283: whether it be \"of the time\" or \"of the max speed\" there could be a lot of factors effecting the results - I'd really like to know specifically what these numbers mean, and how they were obtained.

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wrjohnston19283
September 30, 2009 7:36 PM
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@What The Geek:


The article is pretty poorly written. It does state that speeds lagged 50-80%, but then has language to the effect that 50-80% of THE TIME speeds were less.


I have a 3mbit connection. 50% lower speed means it's 1.5mb. 50% of the time means that 15 days a month my speed is less than 3mbit. If they mean OF THE TIME, then getting 2.9mbit 15 days of a month means that 50% of the time time I'm not getting what I pay for.

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NightSteel
September 30, 2009 7:32 PM
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@What The Geek: The real question is, do ISPs prioritize traffic to and from known speed test sites?

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Spaulding
September 30, 2009 8:07 PM
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@NightSteel:


I've often wondered that. I've gone to those sites a few times and tested my connection speed. The result is always a hell of a lot faster than anything I ever experience normally.

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pecan 3.14159265
September 30, 2009 7:33 PM
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I know my speed is definitely slower than advertised, and I'm trying to find time to make an inquisitive, yet intimidating phone call about it to Cox. It's been so annoying dealing with speeds that are too slow to stream Hulu. Hulu!

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2 replies
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msgruntled
September 30, 2009 8:06 PM
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@pecan 3.14159265: I too have Cox and I am told I get \"high-speed\" economy, purportedly 1.5mbps, which I often don't get. And even at that slow speed, I still get charged $30 a month. It's a ripoff. That speed I can watch Hulu but still it's pretty darn slow and I think $19 a month max is a fair price. Seriously, they already have all the infrastructure installed.

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LeChiffre
October 1, 2009 3:34 PM
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@msgruntled: Have both of you tried resetting the picture quality for Hulu to \"slow\"? Sometimes that helps albeit the picture quality is degraded.

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axiomatic
September 30, 2009 7:34 PM
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Speaking as a network professional this kind of crap has gone on too long.

The only time I see major change is when network professionals like myself demystify the WHARGARBL (lies) that the ISP's attempt to sell their customers on in forums like DSLreports.com or some other forum similar to that.

It's like they think their customers think what they do is magic and it is definitely not. It's rather obviously that American ISP are more interested in leaving the back haul networks alone and charging more for less. And they keep coming up with new ways to make the \"less\" look like \"more\" with creative marketing. (read as MORE LIES.)

If these companies spent just 1/2 the money they do on marketing and applied the other 1/2 to upgrading their infrastructure they wouldn't even have to lie. There would be no need for caps or meters and customers would be happy. On top of that, the US would also not be scored as ridiculously bad as it does in the world rankings.

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UltimateOutsider
September 30, 2009 8:32 PM
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@axiomatic: Well there are three very good reasons the USA lags behind other countries in terms of broadband penetration. 1) It's really big. 2) There's already an extensive legacy infrastructure to upgrade, which is a lot harder to do than simply building out a new one. 3) This stuff ain't free.

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mizike
September 30, 2009 9:07 PM
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@UltimateOutsider: I hate when people use the \"but the U.S./Canada is really big, so of course our internet is slower\" excuse. Fine, that might be true in the middle of nowhere but for places like NYC/Washington/Toronto/Montreal/Boston/Philadelphia/etc., etc., there's really no reason why some company can't offer the level of service available in Korea or Japan. Realisitally, any city approaching a million people should be dense enough to support a local ISP offering truly high speeds (unless the city is a sprawling mess like L.A., even then, just start with servicing the downtown and expand from there).


Maybe government incentives that went to infrastructure costs for ACTUAL new entrants to the market (ie., not the same few companies who have shown time and time again that their only interest is in gouging people) would have an effect.

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TechnoDestructo
September 30, 2009 9:01 PM
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@UltimateOutsider:

1) Not an excuse. Most of the US is uninhabited, and while service to the low-density areas is a challenge, most populated areas have densities comparable to countries with better internet service, and some of them (Mid-Atlantic, for example) are up there with the UK. Our population density in practical terms is not very low.

2) It is and it isn't harder. They've already got the rights of way and a lot of the physical infrastructure for routing and protecting cables. Also, it's FAR easier to get a (thin) cable through a conduit when there's already another cable in it that you are willing to get rid of, that you can use to pull the new cable through. Otherwise you're PUSHING that cable through. I'm not going to claim there aren't difficulties, and I'm sure there are some that I can't even think of. The main issue with legacy infrastructure is the psychological attachment to the sunk costs.

3) South Korea has a PPP Per Capita GDP equivalent to Arkansas. For half what you'd pay in the US, you can get ten times the speed.

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Telekinesis123
September 30, 2009 7:43 PM
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@axiomatic: It's even worse in Canada my friend, at least in Calgary. Way back in the day we were on of the first areas to get cable internet access and ever since then we have been slipping and falling down the ranking to where we're near the bottom of the list especially when compared to US ISP's. Not my comment below how they are running a new radio campaign saying how \"blazingly fast\" they are but never give actual numbers. Well I know the truth and pretty much answers the question why they want an uninformed consumer population.

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mizike
September 30, 2009 9:30 PM
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@Telekinesis123: I'm in Ontario (have lived in Calgary as well) and it's no better here. I think the main issue is that none of the service providers realized how quickly things change when considering the internet. For television and phone service, once you've done the hard work in laying down the infrastructure things don't change for years and years; you can just sit back, do basic maintenance, and watch the money roll in (yes, I know, a gross oversimplification). This is what they expected to happen with the internet as well, they spent all this money laying infrastructure which could support 5mpbs, got ready to climb aboard the money train, and were shocked that people now consider 5mbps barely adequate.


They now either have to start overhauling their infrastructure all over again (which I'm sure wasn't in their business plans for another 10 years), or try to convince people what they already have is good enough (by throtting all torrents, putting hard caps on both speed and GB/month, and excessive advertising about how absurdly fast their inadequate service is).


tl;dr - their business plans are stuck in the 20th century, but they're dealing with a 21st century technology.

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TechnoDestructo
September 30, 2009 8:49 PM
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@Telekinesis123:

That happens to early adopters. Internet speeds in Japan sucked until their ISPs got their shit together and stopped trying to sell ISDN (which they'd deployed really heavily early on).

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NeverLetMeDown
September 30, 2009 7:42 PM
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@axiomatic:


Frankly, the fact that you think that consumer broadband bottlenecks are in the backhaul network makes me question whether you are a network professional.

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axiomatic
October 1, 2009 7:56 PM
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@NeverLetMeDown: You are right. You are being a jerk but you are right. I was going to make a comment on the backhaul and when I edited what I was writing I forgot to switch \"backhaul\" to \"Last Mile\".
But sorry to offend your clearly fragile psyche.

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KyleOrton
September 30, 2009 7:34 PM
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50-80% lower some of the time and somewhat lower 50-80% of the time are very different things. It seems the title and article disagree on which is being reported.

To quote the article, \"...by as much as 50% to 80%.\" I think those of us who have heard ads promising UP TO anything, realize it's a way to sensationalize.

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goodpete
September 30, 2009 9:12 PM
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@futuresuperbowlMVPJayCutler: You point out something extremely important.

However, it seems the sensationalizing that is happening isn't limited to ISPs. The WP and Consumerist post both do a bit of sensationalizing themselves.

First, you're right. The article and the study both say \"by as much as 50% to 80%.\" And that's very different from \"40-80% of the time.\" A restaurant might short change me by 50% on one visit. But that doesn't mean I'm geting shortchanged 50% of the times I visit. While the former is an understandable oversight, the latter is a systemic problem.

Plus, the numbers they give seem to indicate a worst case scenario. But routing and speeds on the internet are extremely complex. If I set up a test server with a 1Mbit (upstream) connection, then had 10 friends all connect to it with their 10Mbit connections, then they might get 100kbits per second when connecting. That's only 1% of their advertised speed. But that's not their ISP's fault. It's mine!

There are millions of routers that make up the internet. Many of them are 10Mbit and 100Mbit routers. So if you have a 20Mbit connection, it's not unreasonable for you to only get 10Mbits sometimes just because you've been routed through a bad router. That's not necessarily your ISP's fault.

Back in the mid-90's, a routing error caused all traffic directed at MIT to be funneled through a small ISP in Florida. So even though MIT had some of the fastest connections in the world at the time and some folks connecting to them were doing so through extremely fast connections, traffic was still bottle-necked at the Florida ISP. And afterwords, someone connecting to a site through MIT might reasonably claim that they were only getting 1% of their advertised speed. But that wasn't their ISP's fault. It also wasn't MIT's fault. It was the fault of a porn surfer in Florida who didn't know how to configure his network connection.

I hope that Chris will correct the post's title, as it's as misleading as, well, some ISP's advertisements.

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Mknzybsofh
September 30, 2009 7:35 PM
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A great big ol' DUH!! goes out to this post. Many many people have been saying that you do not get what you pay for when it comes to internet speeds. There are any number of reasons why you cannot get the speed you pay for. Namely how fast the other persons upload speed is, how much load there currently is on the server that the website is located on, and if there are any current problems with the net in general. All these play major factors into your download speed. I personally do not see this going anywhere.

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milkcake
September 30, 2009 7:36 PM
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I get like 0.8mb download at night versus 9mb in the morning. It's really terrible. I have Time Warner/Earthlink.

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2 replies
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cristiana
September 30, 2009 7:49 PM
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@milkcake:
I have that same problem with Time Warner, but, it doesn't really correlate to any time frame, but, one time for several hours my download speed was hovering at 300k. And for the most part I get terrible download speeds, and shockingly bad upload. I also am pretty sure they are throttling traffic, especially to iTunes, however, I doubt they would even believe me
But, they are the only game in town where I live, and it sucks.

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econobiker
September 30, 2009 7:41 PM
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@milkcake: Maybe everyone else near you is on the interwebtubez downloading at the same time?

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Telekinesis123
September 30, 2009 7:38 PM
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My Internet cable company Shaw Cable is currently running ads how its cable is \"faster then before\" it then goes into this dragged out diatribe with numerous zany analogies how its so much better. In the amount of time they were going on and on about analogies about how much faster it is they could have given me actual numbers 10 times by now. I'm serious, they must think we're all idiots.

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TechnoDestructo
October 1, 2009 1:35 AM
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Are they faster than a 747 full of floppy disks, though?

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valueofaloonie
September 30, 2009 9:08 PM
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@Telekinesis123: Hey, another Shaw user! I die a little every time I see those ads. (We're faster than a slingshot! Than a kung fu guy! Ugh.)

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Telekinesis123
October 1, 2009 3:59 AM
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@valueofaloonie: I know man, saying a lot without actually saying anything, or anything thats legally binding that is like hard numbers.

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TrashHat
September 30, 2009 7:41 PM
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A few years ago I worked at a call center that had a contract for Comcast HSI Support, aside from being a horrible place to work to begin with, I was constantly told to remind customers who complained about either slow internet speeds or customers who just plain had no connection at all that if they read their contract that Comcast actually guaranteed a speed of 0.

Whenever I would ask a question about connection speeds being \"less than optimal\" they would blankly stare at me and repeat \"Comcast guarantees a speed of zero\" and walk away.

I didnt work there for very much longer after I noticed the pattern.

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Révolution
September 30, 2009 7:43 PM
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I guess I'm lucky to have an ISP that I don't want to murder. At peak hours, Verizon is giving me 14-15 of my 15mbps. Off hours, I sometimes get up to 20mbps.

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Zenatrul
September 30, 2009 7:48 PM
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@RĂŠvolution:

Mine is kinda the same way, Although I only have 2Mbps(Yeah for underground old phone wires!) but pretty much all day I can hit my limit even if its peak time or off hours.

Now if only I could get their 5Mbps or 10Mbps :(.

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satoru
September 30, 2009 7:52 PM
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I suppose it depends on where you live. Ironically I've had both Comcast and Verizon FIOS and have always gotten the maximum speed advertised through my Usenet feed (speed tests have slowly become irrelevant IMHO as providers have slowly been 'skewing' traffic to make those tests appear good, while actual usage can never actually sustain the speed)

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UltimateOutsider
September 30, 2009 8:35 PM
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@satoru: It depends on where you live, who your provider is, and in some cases, what your neighbors are doing on their connections. I use Verizon FIOS and Clear WiMax and both services have always delivered 95-100% of their advertised maximum rates.

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bobert
September 30, 2009 7:53 PM
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I can absolutely confirm this.

We have two Internet connections at the house - DSL from AT&T, and cable from Comcast - and I check the throughput occasionally using the usual speed test sites.

AT&T's DSL is just pathetic. The bottom speed for our tier is supposed to be 192 kbps symmetrical. But I just tested it, and it's actually running at 50 kbps symmetrical, which is 26% of what we're paying for. You can get dial-up modems that are faster than that. We have it because the connection is more stable than Comcast, so we use it for some servers that can't go down.

Comcast is nominally 6 Mbps download, or 12 with \"speed boost\". What that means is they kick up the rate for the start of a download and throttle it back. That's supposed to improve your movie-watching experience or something. But it also has the interesting side effect of improving their results on the speed test sites, whose tests run within the \"speed boost\" time window. I routinely download multi-hundred-megabyte files from my employer, and the actual throughput is often far less. But I don't have hard numbers on that readily at hand.

I would love to get an \"enterprise\" quality connection with guaranteed throughput, and a \"service level agreement\" that guarantees an uptime percentage and fixes within a few hours. Comcast has no throughput guarantee, and their notion of a \"service level agreement\" for business customers is \"we'll roll a truck within 24 hours of when your connection goes down.\" Not exactly what you want for a mission-critical business system.

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NeverLetMeDown
October 1, 2009 5:54 PM
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@bobert:


\"I would love to get an \"enterprise\" quality connection with guaranteed throughput, and a \"service level agreement\" that guarantees an uptime percentage and fixes within a few hours.\"


You could certainly get it. 12Mbps symmetrical with an SLA is an 8 T-1 bundle, so you'd be looking at ~$2k/month.

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Révolution
September 30, 2009 7:57 PM
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@bobert: Back when I was still on Comcrap, I was only getting about 12mbps out of my 20 mbps plan from them. Comcast just sucks. They told me they only guarantee 60% of what you pay for. :\\

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G.O.B.: Come on!
September 30, 2009 7:55 PM
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This is more of a problem with cable during peak hours or cable with neighbors who torrent shit all day.

I've gotten accurate and consistent speeds with DSL.

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Brazell
September 30, 2009 7:55 PM
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This is accurate for Charter Comm at my house. I pay for Charter's 20Mbps service, which usually gets the 15 - 18 Mbps route. I don't complain, 15 - 18 is plenty usually.. but it's def. less than what's advertised.

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Telekinesis123
September 30, 2009 8:05 PM
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@MichaelBrazell: I wonder if they would complain if you paid them 20% less on their bill?

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conquestofbread
September 30, 2009 7:59 PM
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Honestly, 50-80% of the time is significant enough for me to consider this fraud.


If you can't deliver what you promise even 50% of the time, you should be promising a lot less.


Aren't there laws about this kind of thing? I mean, isn't there a regulation that would state that if an advertised promise can not be kept more than X% of the time (15, 25, even 30) that it is considered false advertising?

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Nighthawke
September 30, 2009 7:59 PM
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I just got into a argument with a salesman at Office Max over this... He's got it in his head that Verizon is going to waltz into a ILEC run by AT&T and sell FIOS.

And run 3Gbt speeds too.

Heh.

I set his rudder straight on how telecom business are run and who can do what and still make a profit, especially in the field of broadband.

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shepd
September 30, 2009 8:01 PM
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And, occasionally, they're faster than advertised. Says me who \"accidentally\" ended up with a 6-mbit ADSL line while signed up for 5-mbit service. :)

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edesignway
September 30, 2009 8:06 PM
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My provider, Bresnan, can only seem to offer me 2Mbps of the advertised 8Mbps. Using speed tests on their network I only attain 2 to 2.5Mbps. I have lived in several areas of Wyoming and have always had this issue with Bresnan. It's a shame I don't live near Powell... Bresnan tries to blame wiring as the issue, I keep telling them everything is brand new and you are the ones that crimped my cable. When you compare Qwest as the alternative, it's the lesser of two evils.

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TechnoDestructo
October 1, 2009 2:03 AM
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@edesignway:

What is the lesser evil? Qwest or Bresnan?

You didn't establish what \"it\" refers to.

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zgulley
September 30, 2009 8:07 PM
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I recently moved to a new house, and our only option for internet is 3Mbps At&t. At first it was ok, it stayed around 2-2.5... then for about 3 weeks straight it fluctuated between 200-500bps not even Kilobits mind you. finally after 3 hours on the phone with Je~ff they scheduled a tech to come out. The Tech was out the next day on-time mind you, and \"fixed\" the problem within 20minutes(side note, the tech said himself he didn't know how we were ever getting internet because nothing was hooked up right at the pole). I say fixed in quotes because a week later it was back down to 1Mbps to about 1.2Mbps, so I called again. This time I was told that was within \"targeted\" speed for my package and area. I have found if I do a hard reset on the modem, it will get 1500-1800Kbps long enough to watch some Netflix or play some COD, but as soon as I'm done, it's back down to 1Mbit.

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InsertPithyNicknameHere
September 30, 2009 8:13 PM
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According to the press release from the FCC (linked in the Washington Post article), the services aren't slower 50-80% *of the time*, but rather that \"actual broadband speeds lag advertised speeds by as much as 50% to 80%.\" It goes on to point out that high traffic during peak times (cited as 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.) create congestion, causing the loss of speed. So, while this is still appalling, there's a significant difference in what the FCC actually reported and what the Washington Post article stated (\"[M]ore than half the time, and sometimes as much as eight out of ten times, consumers are paying for slower Internet access speed....\").
IMO, poor reporting by the Washington Post.

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goodpete
September 30, 2009 9:17 PM
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@InsertPithyNicknameHere: Excellent comment. The Washington Post is certainly the source of the confusion, but it's pretty obvious they messed up. Chris should have spotted that one. I'm sure they'll correct it soon.

I hope.

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threadislocked
September 30, 2009 8:20 PM
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I have had Cox Cable, ATT DSL, Comcast Cable, Verizon DSL, and I always had the speeds that were promised (minus any overhead) except with Insight Cable who oversold their nodes. Except for Insight I never noticed any slow downs at any \"peak\" times and I used to download 24/7 as much as I could.


This study has to be BS.

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Wilco
September 30, 2009 8:23 PM
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How about having an independent agency (government or private) that establishes a standardized method for calculating the average connection speed per each tier offered by an ISP. Then require that ISPs can only advertise speeds obtained using these methods.

And there you have it! A real-world, apples-to-apples comparable value a consumer can use to go shopping for an ISP. Yes there will need to be a margin of error for this, but as long as the same methodology was used throughout, relative comparisons would at least be more accurate than they are now.

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Colonel Jack O'Neill
September 30, 2009 8:39 PM
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People don't realize that it's not the ISP fault all the time, maybe they do cap your bandwidth, but it's also on the other end.
It goes according to how many people are on any server at any giving time. Some companies cap they bandwidth on their server so people don't use more then anyone else, and the more people on that one server, the slower it's gonna be.

When you downloading something, even if you're are just reading online, all those pages that you go to, you still downloading something.

Downloads really has nothing to do with it, you got take a look at the servers upload speeds. If you on a 10Mbs connection, and their server only has a 1.5Mbs upload. You think you are gonna be downloading at 10Mbs? Of the 1.5Mbs, that could possibly be capped at say like 100k. And the more people on there, the slower it can get.

Also if you're on cable, you're sharing your bandwidth with your neighbors, so if they're doing some downloading, that would also impact your speeds.

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morlo
September 30, 2009 8:48 PM
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Most of the ads I see avoid mentioning actual speed other than saying it's \"blazing fast\" and how it's better than dial-up (?!). I bet half of subscribers don't even know what speed they have. If they did they'd probably realize that they are paying for more internet than they need.

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Goatweed
September 30, 2009 8:49 PM
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My FIOS speeds are always at or near advertised speeds, when I had cable it was ALWAYS substantially lower than what I was supposed to be getting, and of course that was blamed on my neighbors sharing the \"neighborhood node\".

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IceMax
September 30, 2009 10:56 PM
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@Goatweed: Same here, I would never go back to cable after having FIOS. Now if only I could get my HD cable box issues fixed...

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TheMonkeyKing
September 30, 2009 9:02 PM
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Yes, Verizon is crappy where I live but is cheaper than Time-Warner cable. And unfortunately, I need a land line otherwise I would have cut them loose by now. Yes, DSL Reports peg me at getting 50% of what they say I can. Sometimes, I even get less than what their fine print considers bottom speed for that rate. (3 Mbps/768 Kbps but sometimes it's as low as 1.2 Mbps)


Has there been any succesfull CSR calls that gets you a service person to come out and actually fix the line or increase the bandwidth? I've had five calls already that send me first to India and an hour of nonsense (Is your phone line plugged in? Is your computer turned on?), before I got to a local Verizon tech. One visited and actually fixed a problem that got me close to the advertised speed but then five months later it has dropped back down.

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remington870_20ga
September 30, 2009 9:16 PM
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Up next, HD INTERNET ONLY 99.95 A MONTH WITH 2 year contract agreemeny!

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MooseOfReason
September 30, 2009 9:27 PM
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It's hard to enforce anti-fraud laws when the government participates in fraud. Hehehe.

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Quilt
September 30, 2009 9:36 PM
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You know what's lower then advertised 100% of the time? Memory storage sizes. Internal hard-drives. External hard-drives. Memory sticks. Whatever.


Why does noone ever jump on that 800 pound gorilla? It annoys the hell out of me when I go to buy a 1 terrabyte hard-drive and find there is only a little more then 800 gigs.

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Smd75
October 4, 2009 5:05 AM
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@Quilt:
p.s.
You really should be walking away with about 97% of the space youre expecting
not 80%

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Smd75
October 4, 2009 5:03 AM
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@Quilt:

This has to do with conversion. To explain it you have to be able to understand numbering in a system other than Base 10. Humans learn to count in base 10 which includes digits 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9
Computers see numbers in binary which includes 2 digits: 0,1

Thats it in simplicity.
1GB = 1000MBs in computer language, binary, but really 1GB requires 1024MB in decimal. After the computer converts it, it will end up smaller than it is.

And YES before you continue your parade about an 800lb gorilla, It has been an issue that has been dealt with. Apple's OSX Snow Leopard actually shows you what you want to see. Some manufacturers were indeed sued over it, but the reward for the class action lawsuit was worthless.

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Révolution
September 30, 2009 10:50 PM
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@Quilt: You got ripped off then. My 1TB drive comes in at 940 GB. It has to do with the way things are measured. Technically, a 1GB drive is not the same as a 1 GiB drive. OSs tend to relabel Gibibytes as gigabytes.

Gigabyte = 1000 meg.Gibibyte = 1024 meg

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morlo
September 30, 2009 10:36 PM
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@Quilt: measuring speed in mbit/s is similarly deceptive

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chiieddy
September 30, 2009 10:22 PM
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Comcast wants me to pay for a tech to come out and evaluate why I'm getting 1 kbps speeds on my network. We move in a month and are going with DSL.

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golddog
September 30, 2009 11:01 PM
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FWIW, my Qwest DSL is advertised as 1.5 down and I usually get that or a hair better. Wait...did I actually just give props to Qwest...?

For cable, microwave, and FiOS...those are balanced systems, which means the more people on at one time, the more it lags. When they give a speed you'll only see that if you're the only one on that node.

And even DSL depends on how far you are from the switching station, but at least your speed won't vary much at different times of the day.

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MBPedia
September 30, 2009 11:06 PM
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Our Qwest DSL plan is \"up to 7MB/sec\" but a call to customer service confirmed that we will never see higher than 4.5MB/sec. Various testing has shown that to be true, and apparently the average user in Colorado is getting the 7MB I'm paying for! Oh well, it's better than Comcast.

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jake.valentine
September 30, 2009 11:15 PM
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BLAZINGLY FAST INTERNET!! 50%-80% of the time it works every time!


How is that for marketing?

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AngryK9
October 1, 2009 12:14 AM
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Should make \"fine print\" illegal. I wonder how many folks have been scammed by underhanded fine-print tactics. Makes me feel sorry for people who have trouble reading the super tiny print even with glasses or magnifying glasses.

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Al Swearengen
October 1, 2009 2:05 AM
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I love when they say you get blazing fast internet with powerboost to make it even quicker, but then if you download anything of any size they throttle you because you are taking away from everyone else's crappy internet experience.

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AngryK9
October 1, 2009 10:40 PM
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@Al Swearengen: Yes. Like satellite internet. Never ever ever ever ever ever get satellite internet unless you have absolutely no other options except dialup...

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AgitatedDot
October 1, 2009 2:27 AM
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All of the ISP advertise their service as \"UP TO XX Mbit\" therefore the speed is always as advertised.

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deep.thought
October 1, 2009 3:49 AM
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A few things need to be pointed out here. First, the title says that broadband speeds are slower than advertised 50-80% of the time, where the summary says that broadband speeds are 50-80% slower than advertised. These two figures do Not represent the same thing! The first indicates that up to 80% of customers aren't getting the advertised speed, where the second indicates that 100% of customers are getting at worst 20% of the advertised speed. Those two are certainly not the same. Second, it is highly doubtful that wifi is cause for any concern regarding bandwidth; even the increasingly outdated 802.11g has a throughput of 22 Mbit/s. Middle of the road Verizon fios has 25 Mbit/s maximum total throughput (up and down), but the most common broadband bandwidth is <10 Mbit/s maximum total.

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partofme
October 1, 2009 4:26 AM
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This is a case of the headline not matching the source. The FCC's report (only two clicks from this page) says the following:

\"Applications: Most broadband applications focus on browsing, communication and entertainment. Increasingly, these uses are evolving to education, job training, business and other productive purposes. Different applications require different broadband speeds, with the most demanding being high-definition streamed video. But actual broadband speeds lag advertised speeds by as much as 50% to 80%. Peak usage hours, typically 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., create network congestion and speed degradation. About 1% of users drive 20% of traffic, while 20% of users drive up to 80% of traffic. A constrained network dictates investment needs in infrastructure.\"

There is no 'percent of the time'. It is a straightforward, 50-80% lower rate. We either need their data or more discussion of that data to really understand what the distribution looks like. And it leaves the stench of throttling ideas... until the last sentence.

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DrLumen
October 1, 2009 4:34 AM
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I have had AT&T DSL for many years. Their microprint states \"UP TO\" XXX Mbps speed. They don't guarantee or publish a minimum. If their disclaimer of UP TO weren't in there, in my case, I would be at 100% less than what I pay for as I have NEVER gotten the speed advertised. For example, they advertise UP TO 1.5Mbps but I would only get 1.2 - 1.3. 3 Mbps = 2.7 - 2.8. 6 Mbps = 5.7 - 5.8. Odd trend that it's always about 200-300Kbps less.

What I don't understand is if they can advertise faster speed packages like 10, 15, 18 or 25 Mbps, why can't they guarantee or at least meet the advertised slower speeds? I'm glad to see that the FCC is looking into this scam!

BTW, this is on a wired 1000Base-T sub-network connected to the DSL.

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catastrophegirl chooses not to fly
October 1, 2009 4:51 AM
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i will have to test mine on a weekend now.
i pay for: [earthlink] Cable Up to 7.0Mbps
but at midnight tonight i show

15.24Mbps download speed

oh wait! here's the fun part
the test site bounced it off their host server in wilson NC
[i'm not in that town and it's not my ISP but i'm within 50 miles]
[consumerist.com]

of course test #2 i ran through their host server carolina.net and got

0.32Mbps download speed

massive difference. which may explain why a 30 second video clip usually takes me ten minutes of buffering before i can watch it uninterrupted

[and somewhat disturbingly when i tested it by having it bounce off bermuda, it was only marginally lower than the alternate in- state host server: 0.21Mbps.]

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catastrophegirl chooses not to fly
October 1, 2009 4:59 AM
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@catastrophegirl: and btw- the internet monopoly laws for my state didn't pass.. yet.
maybe next year TWC will get their way?
link #1 [savencbb.wordpress.com]
link #2 [savencbb.wordpress.com]

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dijkstramatic
October 1, 2009 8:48 AM
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I've only used one ISP that actually tests higher than claimed. My university provides Internet to pretty much everyone anywhere on campus, and the advertised speed is \"good enough\".

I'm currently downloading a file at 9 megabytes per second.

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fuzzymuffins
October 1, 2009 7:19 PM
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\"your internet speed is only as fast as it's slowest point\"

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narq
October 2, 2009 12:48 PM
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Constant speed can never be guaranteed. There are too many complications that come into play. First your provider, communication type, routing system, DNS, where you are in the world, the status of routing tables for millions of hubs in the world, line degradation, and so on. If one router hundreds of miles from your home goes out that means for the next 4-24 hours you could have half the speed reaching communications on the west coast. Meaning that any websites you go to hosted in NY are full speed but anything in CA is half the speed.

There are a lot of factors beyond the provider's control. They don't own all of the lines the signal travels on. That's why your speed can fluctuate. To be honest there are a ton of wires and hubs out there in dire need of replacement. Unfortunately no government or corporation has the money for upgrades right now.

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Smd75
October 4, 2009 4:53 AM
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You know I've actually just noticed this problem and figured it out. I think most of the time, people just aren't using their connection properly.

Mbps is different from MBps
Mb is Megabit
MB is Megabyte

8 bits make 1 byte
1000 bytes make 1 Megabyte
1000 Megabytes make 1 Gigabyte
There are two ways to connect:
Ethernet (wired) is 10/100/1000Mbps (mega bits per second)
Wireless 802.11 A provides an effective 54Mbps with weak signal
802.11 B can provide an effective 11Mbps with strong signal
802.11 G is the best of A and B, 54Mbps and strong signal
802.11 N provides a strong signal with an effective 100Mbps or higher.

1000Mbps is 10x faster than 100Mbps, 100x faster than 10Mbps
1000Mbps is 18.5x faster than Wireless A or G.

The problem is, most people are not taking the best advantage of their speeds. To do so, you need to have 1Gbps Network Interface Card (NIC) connected to a 1Gbps modem. That will get you your maximum speed. I have Comcast 50Mbps, and multiple sources have confirmed a connection of reaching that speed - but only when I have a wired connection. Over the wireless I am actually getting about a tenth of what I really should get.

I hope this helps explain the problem. The truth is, you probably are receiving what you should, maybe even faster. But the reality is, you're not using it right.

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