How fast is your broadband?

julian

FCC chair proposes new US broadband standard of 100Mbps down, 20Mbps up

Pai FCC said 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up was enough—Rosenworcel proposes 100/20Mbps.

Ars Technica (arstechnica.com)

With the new FCC standard for broadband to be set to 100Mbps down, 20 Mbps up, I thought it might be a good idea to ask around and see what kind of internet speeds we get, as a community.

Eurozone commenters need not reply, as you'll just make all of us North Americans feel bad about your gigabit internet that you all pay €20 a month for (just kidding!)

julian

BEHOLD, MY AWESOME INTERNET SPEEDS (not really)

~$ speedtest 

   Speedtest by Ookla

     Server: Cogeco Connexion Inc. - Burlington, ON (id = 17341)
        ISP: Start Communications
    Latency:    10.45 ms   (1.44 ms jitter)
   Download:    62.04 Mbps (data used: 47.7 MB)                               
     Upload:    12.01 Mbps (data used: 6.3 MB)                               
Packet Loss: Not available.
 Result URL: https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/397813b5-455f-4bbc-a81f-8a4ccc795bdc

I pay $65 CAD a month for this service

Edit: Want to know what this newfangled CLI speedtest is? Get it here

crazycells

Looks like FCC is trying to upgrade from the bronze age to the iron age

Mine is provided by the university, so it is faster than regular...

But here is what I pay to T-mobile for:

julian

@crazycells that symmetrical download and upload... You're making me jealous.

bronze age to the iron age

If that's the case, and does that mean I'm living in the dark ages

crazycells

@julian said in How fast is your broadband?:

@crazycells that symmetrical download and upload... You're making me jealous.

bronze age to the iron age

If that's the case, and does that mean I'm living in the dark ages

lol sorry to break it to you

let's go with stone age

ufan0

This post is deleted!

omega

@julian Yea... but you should see the fuel prices, was verging on $9 a gallon once you do the conversions, but I digress.

I'd say €20 a month for 1Gb is probably Germany - their infrastructure you can see by hosting outfits is very cheap, but it's probably all subsidised, but that's borg livin', we'll own nothing, and be happy! Tbh the Borg seemed permanently pissed all of the time.

omega

Of course, back on topic, even using VPN I'm getting 190 D : 19 U today, but it's summer and it's quiet everywhere right?

omega

Also another tester I cam across years ago - I just like their visualisations - https://speedof.me

I also tried that and got half the rate of speedtest result sin previous post. I guess it's all about ht test server location no?

julian

@omega I like to use the ookla CLI speedtest as it gives you the least "fluff" in between to cause issues, so in my mind, it gives the clearest picture.

Running a nice graphical speedtest on a Raspberry Pi caused the speedtest results to actually drop because the Pi spent all of its time rendering the graphics

Also, don't forget the time npm discovered that they could speed up the actual running of their npm install command by something like 2-3 times, by not rendering the spinner on the console on every tick

julian

@omega The main excuse the telecom companies use here is that Canada is not densely populated, so it costs a lot of money to string telephone and coaxial (and now fiber) across great distances to reach everyone.

Nevermind the fact that:

Many rural Canadians don't actually have access to broadband except via satellite, so these telecoms aren't actually connecting those customers, and
The cost of laying down infrastructure is already heavily subsidized by the government

So what exactly am I paying so much for one wonders.

There are some success stories, though! Thunder Bay, Canada, a city of about 120k, has a municipal broadband service that is quite affordable (we have 2x the number but no municipal broadband)

DownPW

50Euros/per month with Amazon Prime and netflix SD include Add 3euros for Netflix HD

gotwf

Ya' gets what yer' gouged fer' .... if'n yer' lucky!!!

In this instance, looks like I was. Sad days for the Internet in North America, eh?

julian

@DownPW that is all.

cagatay

we are flying in turkey

DownPW

@julian

Yep that all
In France with the operator named "Free"

julian

@DownPW Why is it called "Free"? Shouldn't it be called "Libré"

Working out of a coworking space today...

hmm...

omega

My first coaxial broadband was 0.5 Mbps, that was a real improvement over dial up hands down.

A few years later and a differing location, connection available offered a base that gave real world 6Mbps but ADSL, and around that mark web surfing really did feel instant and responsive, that's about 10 years ago.

Since then browsers have gotten more bloated, OS's too and the average web page layered with all kinds of elements, the rise of streaming and gaming add in the need for VPN's these days, is it actually overkill for basic web, yes it is and that's why I don't really need 1Gbps.

Meanwhile, I got a generic mailer for 1Gbps offer today for 50 euro bucks a month (switch over offer), other offers range around 60-70 eurobucks a month, 500 Mbps, around 30-45 eurobucks, all on fibre.

omega

@omega said in How fast is your broadband?:

Of course, back on topic, even using VPN I'm getting 190 D : 19 U today, but it's summer and it's quiet everywhere right?

My BB has halved since this test, I can't get past 60Mbps D/L at the moment, but the latency and pin rate went to pot, which IMHO is worse.

omega

The latest and greatest in these parts is 1Gbps FTTH for €40 per/month (100Mbps upload)

Surprisingly good too when testing, fast.com has often hit 1.2/1.3 Gbps whatever that might be worth but generally speaking, even with the hit VPN brings you can often achieve 500 Mbps picking the right servers, and sometimes there is no hit to the ping time, but of course it can more often be 80% less.