OT: U.S. Flunks Download Speed Test

Jay Gladwell wrote on 12/23/2009, 5:02 AM

Lately I've been experienceing some serious issues with the Internet speed (or lack thereof) from my service provider, AT&T. They sent me to Speedtest.net to test my connection speed. It peaked at 0.04Mbps. After doing some adjustments on their end and some twiddling on my end, we got the speed up to 5.51 (as of this morning).

On the same site there is a page "World Speedtest.net Result" which shows the U.S. down at number 28 in connection speeds (7.4Mbps) and the Republic of Korea is in the number 1 slot with 23.64Mbps!

My upload speed is a serious joke, not even a full Mbps. The Web surfers in Lithuania are enjoying a very robust 9.26Mbps for an UPLOAD speed. That's considerably faster than my download speed!

So why is the U.S. lagging so far behind in this technology? It would appear that corporations like AT&T have taken the elevator and given us the shaft.

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Comments

srode wrote on 12/23/2009, 7:04 PM

6.7 up and 0.9 download here - Mediacom in Iowa - not so fast / below average for Cable internet in the US I think.

Terry Esslinger wrote on 12/23/2009, 10:19 PM

Strange results here:
Comcast Cable
2723 kb/s down
3228 kb/s upload
WTF

Chienworks wrote on 12/24/2009, 3:23 AM

"6.7 up and 0.9 download here"

Steve, really? I find that very difficult to believe. Something is surely very very wrong. Or did you mean 6.7 down and 0.9 up? That would be much more sensible.

lynn1102 wrote on 12/24/2009, 9:10 AM

In the boondocks about 60 miles northwest of Philly - Frontier Communications is ISP.

1.32 download
.32 upload

My uploads are pretty constant. My downloads today are close to my normal 1.40. Many time in the past few weeks I have been down to .5 upload.

Lynn

PS: Frontier is all that's available unless I want to dig a 400 foot trench for comcast to lay cable.

Larry Clifford wrote on 12/25/2009, 4:59 AM

I have RoadRunner for my ISP, Cable, and Phone. They are about 10 miles from my house. We are both in Richmond, KY.

These are my results using SpeedTest.net:
Download 11.77 Mb/s
Upload 0.37 Mb/s
Ping 80 ms

Their estimate is: 5 MB - 4 sec
35 MB - 24 sec

I often have slow downloads. I think it is the configuration of the system I am downloading from.

Larry

je@on wrote on 12/26/2009, 10:22 AM

In Seattle via Comcast...

Up: 20.64
Down: 8.09
Ping: 10ms

RalphM wrote on 12/26/2009, 11:07 AM

Keeping in mind that the PC you initiate the test from can be a bottleneck. My download speed from my old P4 (which is now an email machine) is 7.5Mbps. My new i7 - 860 is 30Mbps

Steve Mann wrote on 12/26/2009, 11:50 AM

40 Miles NW of Boston:

23.6 Mb/s down
4.14 Mb/s up
Ping 20ms

Comcast Cable.

Verizon FIOS coming in the next few months, town council recently approved their franchise. Woohoo - competition. No more $100/month for medium-speed Internet.

Steve Mann wrote on 12/26/2009, 12:01 PM

Johnny - how did you insert the IMG link on the forum?

Chienworks wrote on 12/26/2009, 12:06 PM

Steve, look at Sticky #3, "New markup for forum posts". It's all explained nicely there.

Steve Mann wrote on 12/26/2009, 12:18 PM

Thanks..

But that's the best I've ever seen. The average is 11 Mb down.....

Terry Esslinger wrote on 12/26/2009, 5:30 PM

OK, ran another test. See previous results above.

This time got
Dwn: 21.61 mbs
Up:4.17 mps
ping:10

The diffreence in the tests? Two different computers on the same connection. First one connected wirelessly and P4.
Second one directly connected to modem (hardwire) and i7.
Duhhhhhhh

richard-amirault wrote on 12/26/2009, 7:09 PM

Slowest version of FIOS I could get.