> On Fri, 12 Mar 2010, Joe Greco wrote: > > I've gotten strange stuff each time I've tried their tests. I > > particularly like the factor of 10 difference in upload speeds. > > The FCC is probably doing this because US providers generally don't > release actual bandwidth, speeds or latency numbers their consumer > customers get.
I understand the point behind the test. > Advertised numbers often don't mean anything. If > providers want to release better data, it might help the FCC understand > the current environment. > > Some US providers have published data for their business customer > connections and backbones. I realize that a high level of participation could result in the FCC gaining a more complete understanding of broadband penetration, and specific areas where there are problems. However, I have some reservations as to whether or not the FCC will be able to get enough people to participate in this to be able to generate a meaningful dataset. Further, major inconsistencies such as what I just pointed out brings into question the validity of the test, and therefore the value. I am not that concerned about the difference between 4Mbps and 5Mbps, but when there's an order of magnitude difference involved... on the same connection... I would guess, hopefully correctly, that Speedtest.net, Akamai, and others already have a good handle on broadband speeds, and it seems to me that the FCC could get a much more thorough picture of per-ISP performance (which of course isn't street-level) simply by getting these guys to summarize their results. As such, the only real value I see the FCC tool offering is the potential for visibility into things such as DSL speed/distance limitations, but in order for that to be meaningful, you'd have to get a lot of people to run the test. Which brings us back to ... I'm not entirely sure that this is a useful strategy. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
