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Comments on news posted 2010-03-12 10:16:49: Just a few days before the FCC is poised to introduce our first ever national broadband plan, the agency has launched a new java-based speed test application at the Broadband.gov website. ..

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iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

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Re: They should partner with someone on this for servers

Uhh, I actually mentioned that test in another post. That exact one, in fact.

For what it's worth, it wouldn't take a whole lot to get accurate results on speed tests money-wise; I'm guessing Cogent and/or Hurricane Electric would be okay with providing a few gigabits of bandwidth for a nominal fee (Cogent is pro-net neutrality btw), and a few midrange quad-core servers on gigabit pipes, limited to twenty simultaneous tests, would probably do well for this sort of thing...
BHNtechXpert
The One & Only
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join:2006-02-16
Saint Petersburg, FL

1 recommendation

BHNtechXpert

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Broadband.gov speed test = Fail!

Before getting all hyped that your ISP is failing to deliver based on the Broadband.gov test results you might want to read this...

»www.ispgeeks.com/wild/mo ··· 29#17112

I've spent the last 24 hours testing from different locations with different connections and I can't even give them a "decent" rating without laughing.

I used 3 different testing sources (one of which is mine...I will confess this right up front) and the results pretty much speak for themselves. You are better off still using one of the established testing sites out there vss the broadband.gov site.

The datamining is what really has me disturbed though. There is no reason why they need your address. They can easily obtain the ISP and location through public domain Geo-IP locate databases. This stinks of typical government crap and given our current administration's history you might be best off to give less than accurate information about your address. It's frankly none of their business WHERE you live for this type of testing. Your IP resolves to your ISP and county...that's all they need to know.

mrkevin
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
Premium Member
join:2007-08-07
Aurora, ME

mrkevin

Premium Member

coast to coast

There's no way you can get an accurate speed test when your server is in Seattle...and over 18 hops from me

And if you're only going to have one server, why not put it in a central location like St. Louis

Are you listening FCC??

powerspec88
Premium Member
join:2007-03-11
Lees Summit, MO

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Re: Its a bit slow..

said by NetAdmin1:

Where I work, we connect to our 10Gbps backbone, but the internet is a lot slower than that because of the Cisco firewall filtering traffic. I'd wager you probably have the same situation - a firewall somewhere with a slower connection than the fiber coming into the building.
We do no filtering at all. Just a firewall.
powerspec88

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We are a data center, so it is used by our clients, and me when i'm there
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

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Re: They should partner with someone on this for servers

PowerBoost affects the speed of the link still, but at least it's pretty much maxing out the connection rather than giving me a bogus result...

mrkevin
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
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join:2007-08-07
Aurora, ME

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Re: Broadband.gov speed test = Fail!

said by BHNtechXpert:

The datamining is what really has me disturbed though. There is no reason why they need your address. They can easily obtain the ISP and location through public domain Geo-IP locate databases. This stinks of typical government crap and given our current administration's history you might be best off to give less than accurate information about your address. It's frankly none of their business WHERE you live for this type of testing. Your IP resolves to your ISP and county...that's all they need to know.
I agree, and I had the same thoughts when that came up.
They ABSOLUTELY do not need to know this information.

Bill Dollar
join:2009-02-20
New York, NY

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Re: The test is inaccurate...

Rob,

With all due respect, any real honest statictician would have a hard time using any of this data, because it violates basic rules of sample selection bias. There are ways to correct for that, but nothing that could render anything worthwhile from these self-selected tests.

The FCC should take a cue from Offcom, and do a SamKnows style testing, which corrects for selection bias as well as all sorts of other intervening factors.

fifty nine
join:2002-09-25
Sussex, NJ

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The problem is that the mlab test doesn't work with Firefox on Linux, which is what I'm using.

It also doesn't work with chrome on windows 7 which is what I also used.

If this test is IE only they're going to get a lot of skewed results. Not everyone wants to use IE.

FFH5
Premium Member
join:2002-03-03
Tavistock NJ

1 edit

FFH5

Premium Member

said by fifty nine:

The problem is that the mlab test doesn't work with Firefox on Linux, which is what I'm using.

It also doesn't work with chrome on windows 7 which is what I also used.

If this test is IE only they're going to get a lot of skewed results. Not everyone wants to use IE.
From FCC:
Note: the M-Lab application currently does not work with Safari, Chrome, and Opera web browsers.

The ookla test should work:
Ookla also provides free services at their public web site Speedtest.net.
It is the same test as used at speedtest.net

pokesph
It Is Almost Fast
Premium Member
join:2001-06-25
Sacramento, CA

pokesph

Premium Member

Inaccurate!


Ookla - first test

Ookla - retest

M-Labs - first test

M-Labs - retest
Looks like these tests, especially the m-labs one, are not too accurate and vary from test to test (all within minutes)

The m-lab's one really looks messed up.

jlivingood
Premium Member
join:2007-10-28
Philadelphia, PA

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Re: The test is inaccurate...

Robb - You are the resident M-Labs expert... Do you know how many TCP connections that the M-Labs tool uses?

Also - do you have any idea how the test decides to use one test or the other (M-Labs or Ookla)?

FFH5
Premium Member
join:2002-03-03
Tavistock NJ

2 edits

FFH5

Premium Member

said by jlivingood:

Robb - You are the resident M-Labs expert... Do you know how many TCP connections that the M-Labs tool uses?

Also - do you have any idea how the test decides to use one test or the other (M-Labs or Ookla)?
The FCC web site says it picks it at random. But when the test ends, you can then run the other test.

»www.broadband.gov/qualit ··· t/about/
Users will be assigned to one of the two chosen testing tools: Ookla or M-Lab, or they can directly choose one of these tools at the links at the bottom of this page.
But you can pick which one you want from the above link or use the links I found below:

Ookla:
»www.broadband.gov/qualit ··· ?sCode=O

M-Lab:
»www.broadband.gov/qualit ··· ?sCode=M
Skippy25
join:2000-09-13
Hazelwood, MO

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Re: Boost

What are you talking about? If it shows 25/10 because of powerboost and your connection is 12/5 then it is providing false information is it not?

knightmb
Everybody Lies
join:2003-12-01
Franklin, TN

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I tried it straight from our 1000 Mbs fiber, only got around 30 mbps, so I think they are probably getting hammered by all of us testing it out.

jadebangle
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join:2007-05-22
00000

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Re: Its a bit slow..

said by powerspec88:

Yes, 750Mbps up and down. We just got another ISP so you can add 200Mbps to that once we get BGP peering between our other two routers. I work at a data center btw. I just can't believe how slow it is, but then again, who knows how many users are trying to run the test right now.
it not how many user are running the site it how many user are on this shared connection
750mbit is the total bandwidth of your data center
not dedicated to each user.

Ericthorn
It only hurts when I laugh
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join:2001-08-10
Paragould, AR

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Re: The test is inaccurate...

If it's the same then why are the results so skewed? Ookla had inaccurate d/l data while speedtest was accurate.

rebus9
join:2002-03-26
Tampa Bay

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Re: Boost

Tried it within moments of the news hitting NANOG first thing this morning, and the speeds weren't even close. The Java app pegged me at 1.3M down 18M up. The flash app was the opposite, only more extreme. 24M down 0.3M up.

Tests were run from 25/25 FIOS.

Z80A
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join:2009-11-23

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Re: Pointless

Until they cherry pick the data like all gov't institutions do.

FFH5
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join:2002-03-03
Tavistock NJ

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Re: The test is inaccurate...

said by Ericthorn:

If it's the same then why are the results so skewed? Ookla had inaccurate d/l data while speedtest was accurate.
Are they? I get similar results:






Not identical, but I wouldn't expect them to be. Which speedtest server did FCC choose for ookla test? It may not be the same. And how long the test runs for the FCC vs native speedtest.net may not be the same.

CosmicDebri
Still looking for intelligent life
join:2001-09-01
Lake City, FL

CosmicDebri

Member

Looks ok for me

The mlabs test was very poor, half the d/l speed and 4x more latency and jitter, but the other looked pretty spot on, I have AT&T DSL 6m/512.

If I could get these numbers all the time when actually using, it would be great.

fifty nine
join:2002-09-25
Sussex, NJ

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Re: The test is inaccurate...

They are way off.

Speedtest.net is more along the line of what I'd expect, whereas broadband.gov's test showed about one third of our total download speed and one fortieth of our total upload speed.
BHNtechXpert
The One & Only
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join:2006-02-16
Saint Petersburg, FL

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Re: Broadband.gov speed test = Fail!

said by mrkevin:

said by BHNtechXpert:

The datamining is what really has me disturbed though. There is no reason why they need your address. They can easily obtain the ISP and location through public domain Geo-IP locate databases. This stinks of typical government crap and given our current administration's history you might be best off to give less than accurate information about your address. It's frankly none of their business WHERE you live for this type of testing. Your IP resolves to your ISP and county...that's all they need to know.
I agree, and I had the same thoughts when that came up.
They ABSOLUTELY do not need to know this information.
If you think about it. The only way the government can currently associate an ip with an address is with a court order. By freely giving your information on the FCC speed test site (meaning address) you completely circumvent that requirement. Combine that with essentially a crappy speed test and you have a no winner for me.
BHNtechXpert

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Re: coast to coast

said by mrkevin:

There's no way you can get an accurate speed test when your server is in Seattle...and over 18 hops from me

And if you're only going to have one server, why not put it in a central location like St. Louis

Are you listening FCC??
LOL! But as usual the government is clueless about broadband and how it works so in their feeble minds they are doing us all a huge favor....fail!

jlivingood
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join:2007-10-28
Philadelphia, PA

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Re: The test is inaccurate...

Thanks!

From the office the Ookla test returns: 35M/3M
and M-Lab: 21M/4M
Madtown
Premium Member
join:2008-04-26
93637-2905

Madtown

Premium Member

Main page.

The main page of the site doesn't even finish loading, I think too many people are on there at once.
chuckkk
join:2001-11-10
Warner Robins, GA

chuckkk

Member

Govt Seed test

This .gov speed test is more accurate, consistent, proven, more or less centrally located, and provides diagnostic data
»miranda.ctd.anl.gov
(Even though it's from Obama land!

NOCTech75
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join:2009-06-29
Marietta, GA

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Re: The test is inaccurate...

Way off here also, my home DS3 test is way lower then what it should be. Of course I suppose I should have entered an accurate address, as usual government fail.
BHNtechXpert
The One & Only
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Saint Petersburg, FL

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Re: Govt Seed test

said by chuckkk:

This .gov speed test is more accurate, consistent, proven, more or less centrally located, and provides diagnostic data
»miranda.ctd.anl.gov
(Even though it's from Obama land!
But apparently incapable of testing anything more than about 10mbps. I just tested from California, Florida and Texas all with very high capacity connections and they all capped at about 11mbps (should have been between 20-100mbps based on the connections used). The test might be okay for those below 10mbps...but nothing higher.
nanoflower
join:2002-07-14
30876

nanoflower

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I won't be doing that again.

I was willing to give it a try. Even put in my real address so they could map the data, but when I went to the next page and tried to start the test it crashed Firefox. This is only the second page that I've found to crash the latest Firefox. The other one is that IfICanDream web site which sometimes crashes.

I would much rather use a site that tests speeds without requiring me to give so much identifying information
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