This is what I switched to AVOID!

September 29, 2009 5:42 PM

Is Verizon lying to me?

After fighting tooth and nail with Verizon, I FINALLY had FiOS installed today. Great. Awesome. Loving it. I got the 25/15 Mbps package, but speedtest.net seems to be struggling to get to 3 Mbps. Verizon's own speedtest utility tells me that I'm getting the right speed-ish.

What gives? Is Verizon lying to me about my speed, or is speedtest inaccurate for some reason?

FWIW, browsing has felt noticably snappier than with my 15Mbps Comcast connection, but I haven't had any large downloads or torrents to really test it out on.

It's just weirding me out.

posted by InsanePenguin to computers & internet (13 answers total)

try speakeasy i've always had good luck with it.
posted by no bueno at 5:44 PM on September 29, 2009

Sorry, Speakeasy is a speed test in case that wasn't obvious. It was Lifehacker's favorite and that is usually good enough for me.
posted by no bueno at 5:45 PM on September 29, 2009

25 Mb/s is roughly 3MB/s. The verizon speed test reports in MB/s (megabits vs. megabytes)
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 5:47 PM on September 29, 2009 [2 favorites]

There's apparently something horribly wrong with Speedtest.net, at least from your computer. I can use Speedtest.net on my computer and it properly shows ~25/~15mbps, just as I've ordered. Try downloading a large file and see how fast it runs. 25Mbps is roughly 3MB/s. Don't let those trip you up.
posted by fireoyster at 5:47 PM on September 29, 2009

Ok..I actually tested the speedtest.net site and it does display as megabits and it's only showing my connection as 4mb/s. At speakeasy, I'm showing my full 25. Just proves my theory that Towerstream sucks ass.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 5:50 PM on September 29, 2009

Yeah, as CPH said, 25Mb is about 3MB (eight bits in a byte.)
posted by rokusan at 5:52 PM on September 29, 2009

You know, I've used Speakeasy before, but totally forgot about it. I didn't even think to check another speed test service.

Thanks, guys. Speakeasy showed me the right speed. Awesome. And thanks Cat Pie Hurts, I did think of the Megabytes versus Megabits, but I was sure that Speedtest used Mbps as a metric. But than I wasn't sure. Thought I might be crazy.
posted by InsanePenguin at 6:20 PM on September 29, 2009

Speedtest has a lot of different test servers. You can always try another on the map.
posted by floam at 6:42 PM on September 29, 2009

Eight bits in a byte, yes, but allow for, say 25% overhead total thru the stack. I usually assume 10 bits per byte end-to-end.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 7:44 PM on September 29, 2009

Guys,

I hate to break it to you, but speedtest.net is owned and operated by none other than Speakeasy.

Always has been, too.

The differences you see are probably based on which test server you are using.
posted by crazyray at 10:08 PM on September 29, 2009

It also might help to choose a location to test that is near one of the peering points. Otherwise you might be making a trip from your pc, to a peering point then back to a network in your town.

Here are the major peering points in the US.


* San Francisco Bay Region (San Jose CA, Palo Alto CA, Santa Clara CA, San Francisco CA)
* Washington DC / Northern Virginia Region (Washington, DC, Ashburn VA, Reston VA, Vienna VA)
* New York City Region (New York NY, Newark NJ)
* Chicago Region (Chicago IL)
* Los Angeles Region (Los Angeles, CA)
* Dallas Region (Dallas, TX, Plano, TX, Richardson, TX)
* Miami, FL
* Seattle, WA
posted by Climber at 6:07 AM on September 30, 2009

Don't discount the fact that the large ISP's routers will try to route traffic along their private backbones to the closest *logical* point of connection. Which isn't always the closest geographically.
posted by gjc at 7:06 AM on September 30, 2009

Try my employer's. It's a licensed version of the same speedtest everyone else uses (ie. SpeakEasy's), but it's running on a mostly otherwise idle server in our datacenter.
posted by togdon at 11:06 AM on September 30, 2009