[123633] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: FCC releases Internet speed test tool
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joe Greco)
Fri Mar 12 09:44:21 2010
From: Joe Greco <jgreco@ns.sol.net>
To: sean@donelan.com (Sean Donelan)
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:43:47 -0600 (CST)
In-Reply-To: <alpine.GSO.2.00.1003120926310.12570@clifden.donelan.com> from
"Sean Donelan" at Mar 12, 2010 09:34:14 AM
Cc: "nanog@nanog.org list" <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
> 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.
