FCC Has 20,000 Speedtest Volunteers But they're looking for more... As we noted back in April, the FCC has struck a deal with UK measurement firm SamKnows to test user broadband speeds across the United States. The agency plans to use a modified Cisco Valet with custom firmware in subscriber homes in order to test connections -- and will use honest-to-goodness science to then forge broadband policy (surprisingly a first for the agency). According to an FCC blog post, the agency says that 20,000 users have already volunteered but they're looking for more users "that represent a wide swath of ISPs, access technologies, service plans, and regions of the country" (well, unless you have bandwidth caps). The FCC's TestMyISP.com website has information for those interested.
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  Duramax08A Challenger AppearsPremium
join:2008-08-03
San Antonio, TX | signed up already signed up. show them how crappy my internet is.
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I heart my unreliable internet by clear. | |
|  | MadtownPremium
join:2008-04-26
Madera, CA | Re: signed up I would had done the same, but I don't want to go through the trouble of setting it up to WPA2, making the encrypion stronger, and plus the main reason is I don't want them to know every websites I go to on the internet. | |
| | | | so did i, never got a confirmation email tho.
as for security, i could care less what they see me doing as long as they see how crapp our so called "high speed" is. | |
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 adsldudePremium,Ex-Mod 2003-9
join:2000-11-10
Colorado
kudos:1 | No thank you... I wonder what else they will attempt to monitor beside broadband speed? The terms and conditions are not specific enough to be of much help. | |
|  TransmasterDon't Blame Me I Voted For Bill and Opus
join:2001-06-20
Cheyenne, WY | ??? why Isn't there outfits that track this sort of data already and report it on their websites? | |
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1 edit | Not eligible.... Unfortunately I'm a cable cord-cutter, so I get my evening TV fix through Netflix and various other streaming video sites. This makes me an evil bandwidth hog not worthy of assessing or considering my use case. | |
| | | Low caps to satisfy cable and satellite co's I'm in the same boat as the previous two posters who mention being heavy users. It's seriously a load of crock that heavy users cannot participate. I personally think it's to give a leniency to the cable co's and satellite providers with their crap caps. 
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--25/15 FIOS ~ 25.8D--28.9U-- | |
| | | I should sign up I am pretty sure my Cox slow speeds are due to attenuation from the extra-long inside wire I have running around the pad I just moved into that I have been too lazy to clip. I qualify to be an ideal candidate.  | |
|  ztmikeMark for moderationPremium
join:2001-08-02
Michigan City, IN
1 edit | Requirements From the website..
quote:
You are not a heavy downloader. We'd classify anything above 30GB per month as being too heavy for us to gather useful results.
Well, I'm out. 
Wasn't aware 30gb was "too heavy" | |
| BiggA
join:2005-11-23
EARTH Reviews:
 ·Comcast
| 30GB? That's a pretty low cap for this test.
I assume that they don't want the traffic to interfere with their tests, but you'd think the box can tell when the internet is in use, and not run it's tests during that time, and also monitor the speed of stuff coming from guaranteed bandwidth providers like Akamai and Limelight. My 6mb Comcast cable does about 6.5 sustained, and about 25 for the first 20MB (Powerboost). | |
| | Bengie25
join:2010-04-22
Wisconsin Rapids, WI Reviews:
·Charter
1 edit | Re: 30GB? I signed up, hope to get in.. but yeah, 30GB is low. I have a 16mb connection which is 2048KB/sec and 30GB/month is an average of only ~12KB/sec.
I typically average ~50GB/month according to my router, but all I do is play games and watch Netflix/YouTube.
I did play catch-up recently on an anime that I haven't seen in a few years, so I torrented a 30GB 12 season pack in under 8 hours and that wasn't even pegging my connection. I could still play BC2 with a 15ms ping and stream Netflix with no problems.
Since they claim to only download 2GB/month with their test unit, I don't think my "heavy" net usage will skew anything. 2GB/month is only an average of 2.8MB/hour. I could be downloading 16mb/sec and if the unit kicks in to speed test, it would download that 2.8MB in one second since I can break 40mb/sec with power boost. It wouldn't even know I was using the internet. | |
| | | BiggA
join:2005-11-23
EARTH Reviews:
·Comcast
| Re: 30GB? Yeah, and you're not a heavy user. I pushed 236GB just with downloading a bunch of HD podcasts and torrent last month. Granted, I did waste a lot of bandwidth, but I am the only user who uses any significant amount of transfer.
The tester device should know when you are using the internet, and not test then, as even someone who uses 1GB/mo would skew the result if they happened to be using the internet while that box decided to do it's test. It could also use connections from Limelight and Akamai to judge real-world performance of the connection. My connection does very well, other than the fact that we're stuck on the 6/1 plan and they haven't upgraded our area to 12/2. | |
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n4bkn
join:2003-12-11
Memphis, TN | Not eligible I work for part of the world's largest telecommunications company, and get my service from another part of the same company. | |
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