It may have something to do with it being Super Sunday and all, but I just took CNET’s bandwidth speed test for my Earthlink DSL and came in at a surprisingly fast (to me) 2072.1 kbps. That’s faster than predicted for a T1 connection. Is this an anomaly? Adelphia has been running a big ad campaign in the Southern California market for their cable Internet service, claiming their speeds top DSL, but I’m inclined to doubt it.
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Cable has always been faster than DSL, although your DSL reading is the best I have yet seen. I just checked my Earthlink Cable (delivered through Time-Warner cables) with the same source, and the result was 2967.3 Kbps.
Most well-performing DSL connections deliver about 1000 Kbps, so yours was considerably above average.
That is damn good for DSL.
While that is on the low side for cable, the thing about cable is that your connection is shared with your neighbors, so at a busy time you might do worse. With DSL you have a dedicated connection to the central office, where presumably it has a nice fat pipe to the Internet.
Another good test site, whose numbers I trust a bit more, is the Broadband Reports speet test.
I live near Mid-Wilshire in L.A. (1 mile east of The Grove), and have a Comcast cable modem. I clocked in at 1977.7 kbps, a bit slower than your DSL.
So I would have to agree with you that DSL seems to be beating cable around here.
It is also impossible. If you only have a T1 connection then the raw bit rate is 1544 Kbps.
The various speed tests across the Net vary quite a bit in how they work and so do not always report comparable results. I’ve gotten results of 3500 kbps or more with my cable modem service. However, your results for your DSL are really surprisingly high.
Here in the far reaches of the hinterland, in West Texas, my system consists of copper wire that I have connected to the telephone line down in the East cow pasture. This feeds an IBM Selectric© typewriter that I have mated to an old Zenith black&white TeeVee for a monitor. Amazingly I’m receiving at .2 KPS. A little faster if I connect two John Deere batteries in tandem to fully power up.
It’s a tad slow but at least I feel I’m connected to the outside world.
These tests are also very dependant upon changes in the browser you use and local equipment. Wireless routers vary in the speed of their packet forwarding a lot. For example, I ran the above test using my wireless laptop through my wireless router and got less than 1700 bps. I ran it with a different browser on a slower computer that was connected to the same router via a direct ethernet link instead of wireless and got 2645 kbps. And I suspect that it would easily top 3000 kbps if I direct connected to the modem on this test ( as I mentioned above, I gotten other tests to register 3.5 Mbps ).
Here’s another connection speed test:
http://us.mcafee.com/root/speedometer/default.asp
My results were consistent with the CNET test, and don’t vary much whether I’m connected wirelessly or by cable.
BTW Wallace, I hear that similar setups nearly double their speed if groundhog burrows running perpendicular to the wires have been recently flooded. No one knows why, and I haven’t seen any actual research, just anecdotes. Poorly written anecdotes.
Why groundhogs? I guess I’ve gut Punxatawny on my mind.
Morgan, I don’t think I trust that link you posted. It reports that my connection has a bandwidth of 111.608 megabits per second.
I know I’m paying through the nose for this cable modem ó†$55 a month is highway robbery! ó†but I don’t think it’s that peppy.
Jeff, depending on which test you run, you should clear your cache between attempts.
Deep in the heart of Brooklyn, I’m getting a little better than 4000 kbps on the machine directly connected to the cable modem, and 1257 kbps on the laptop using my wireless waypoint.
I do remember the bad old days of dial-up….
Here in Australia we’ve been restricted to a max speed of 1500kbps (about 1360kbps in real terms) by our main telco (Isp’s could only re-sell the telco’s dsl product). Recently the local go getter Isp has installed dslams into many exchanges across Australia which has allowed it to bypass Telstra’s product and offer it own choice of speeds. What they’ve done is to just say whatever speed your line can handle, thats what you get. Adsl 1 has a maximum speed of 8000kbps (dependant on proximity to the exchange) and many people are reporting speeds close to that. Most seem to be getting around 5000 to 7000kbps. (naturally this is only to sites that can produce that much bandwidth)
I’m stuck with the 1500kbps product so I’m still envious of Rogers speeds.
(I suppose “stuck” isn’t the right word, I, like Mark, remember only to well the days of dial-up and getting excited about a download speed of 45kbps instead of my normal 35kbps!)
I live in Central Phoenix and I clocked in at 839.9, about 40 times as fast as my old dialup connection. You better believe I’m happy with that!
Roger, try DSL Report’s test, which is a bit more comprehensive than CNET’s test.
FYI: I’m typing this via Adelphia’s cable modem, and my speed is 2869.2. Prior to cable modem, my speed was iDSL which is extremely slow.
Roger,
Using the test you linked, the speed for my Comcast cable modem (in Venice, CA) was 5803.7 kbps.
Using the test at http://www.broadbandreports.com/stest, I clocked in at 2966 kbps down and 220 kbps up.
Time Warner Cable / Road Runner just announced a service upgrade for Stevenson Ranch, CA – my test – 4571.6 kbs.
Prior to the upgrade – 2000 – 2400kbs was the normal speed seen. 2 years ago, before Time Warner bought the local system, 1100kbs was the norm.
The test was run on 1 of 4 computers connected via a Linksys WRT54G Wired / Wireless Router and the cable modem provided by TW. The wired connection from the PC to the Router is at 100mbs.
I’ve no complaints with the speed or the value.
Yes, try broadbandreports as suggested by mcg. That one jibes with the speed I get from Usenet downloads. McAfee was a bit high, and CNet showed less than half of that.
You can have a bit of fun with the CNet test. When it’s done, go back just one page. I got INFINITY as my speed! (Yes, I know that’s invalid because I’ve circumvented something.)
Jim, that’s because the downloaded file was cached.
Roberts, I got that bizarre result on my first attempt. I’d never been to that Web site before.
I’m pretty confident that their site is, in some way, broken. It might affect other folks, it might just affect me.
Roger,
If you’re using Firefox, get the free bandwidth extension. My Adelphia cable modem in Thousand Oaks reports 2.6 megabits. The CNET test was half that. But I know from experience downloading large files that the faster speed is true.
Verizon is busy installing fiber to the premises in parts of LA and Ventura counties. They offer 5 megabits down and 3 megabits up for $34.95. I can’t wait.