Internet is SLOW

[CharlesH]

ANEMONE, no idea what you are really trying to prove at all....

[anemone]

not to flood the board with two posts in succession, but I missed this gem:

"Again, your download speed has several factors, odds are, you ARE getting what you pay for. The hosts or websites you download off of, most likey do not provide download speeds as fast as your FiOS internet connection."

Charles: Does that include Verizon as a site?

I would think they could crank out the Mb/sec so I could verify I'm getting what I paid for.

Again. As you mentioned, Speakeasy is a pretty good test site. Your above quote is something I remember from dialup days.

[anemone]

AND...I'm not trying to PROVE anything, CharlesH. Just stating facts/my experiences about Verizon FiOS as a knowlegeable consumer.

[philhu]

I have FIOS, it is MegaBYTES. I have 20/5. I too see Verizon speedtest is broken on my service, but I have run 3-4 speedtests and see 19+/4+ consistently. So, if you are having problems, CALL TECH SUPPORT, don't rant in here without letting them fix it.

Message Edited by philhu on 12-30-2008 09:23 AM

[prisaz]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabit 

Mb Megabits

MB Megabytes 

Who is wrong?

Try this link it works for me

http://speedtest.verizon.net/SpeedTester/help_speedtest.jsp 

Test Analysis Information

Checking for Middleboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Done
Requesting send buffer size be set to [130680]
SendBufferSize set to [130680]
running 10s outbound test (client to server) . . . . . 4.35Mb/s
running 10s inbound test (server to client) . . . . . . 19.17Mb/s
Information: Network Middlebox is modifying MSS variable
Server IP addresses are preserved End-to-End
Information: Network Address Translation (NAT) box is modifying the Client's IP address
Server says [71.191.59.215] but Client says [192.168.64.2]

Message Edited by prisaz on 12-30-2008 02:25 PM

ANL shows the same.

http://miranda.ctd.anl.gov:7123/ 

TCP/Web100 Network Diagnostic Tool v5.5.1
click START to begin
Connected to: miranda.ctd.anl.gov  --  Using IPv4 address
Checking for Middleboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Done
checking for firewalls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Done
running 10s outbound test (client-to-server [C2S]) . . . . . 4.46Mb/s
running 10s inbound test (server-to-client [S2C]) . . . . . . 19.23Mb/s

Message Edited by prisaz on 12-30-2008 02:28 PM

[philhu]

I stand corrected.

It is mb/s, so Megabits.

If it was 20 MegaBYTES, then it would be too fast for my 100 meg RJ45 in my house!

20/5 mb/s is approx 2.3mB/650kB

Sorry...

Message Edited by philhu on 12-30-2008 02:38 PM

[prisaz]

---

@philhu wrote:

I stand corrected.

It is mb/s, so Megabits.

If it was 20 MegaBYTES, then it would be too fast for my 100 meg RJ45 in my house!

20/5 mb/s is approx 2.3mB/650kB

Sorry...

No problem. I just had a good chuckle. My Cat6 wire would be getting warm at that speed.

Here is another list of many speed tests.

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest?more=1

Message Edited by philhu on 12-30-2008 02:38 PM

---

[Wigster]

I find my service unreliable and it sometimes stutters and freezes. I believe this is related to wireless operation (MI424WR). I have not seen the same problems when I connect directly via ethernet cable.

My speed test from Argonne Labs site

4.36 Mb/s outbound

19.15 Mb/s inbound

Units are important. Could someone reply to the distinction "others" have made between MB/s and Mb/s? What is really advertised by cable and verizon? I can't imagine that one is really MB/s and the other is Mb/s. They both must mean Mb/s. How do they really stack up? My values (if Mb/s were intended) seem close enough to advertised speed. Otherwise, some one owes me approximately and order of magnitude more speed! 

These values were similar when on a functioning wireless connection. 

My stuff ... 

2 MacBook Pro, OS X 10.5.6 2GB RAM

2 IBM Think Pads, Windows XP and NT 5

Wii

Powerline adapter with Blu-Ray Player ... not functioning although line test and PC connect works. 

No, I don't think any of the suggestions here address my problems of a slow and unreliable wireless connection. I am familiar with set up and have done troubleshooting and feel this is the router. I had no issues when I could use my apple extreme base station. 

 Cheers

Message Edited by Wigster on 12-30-2008 11:18 PM

[bullfrog1962]

I was also stumped by the megabit-megabyte question. I use http://www.speedtest.net/ . You can go into their site and tell it how you want the results to be displayed. they also save a history for your comparisons. scarey but neat. If you are worried someone is saving what you are doing on the net, log off now and forever, never use credit cards and never make another major purchase where your name, birthday or ss# is required.

this link will show you one of my test

http://www.speedtest.net/result/381752954.png

[Snapper3]

Allow me to first thank CharlesH for his encouragement.  At his suggestion that my 15Mb was not normal, I did try to call and speak with a tech at Verizon.  

I believe all customers who have had to deal with any American utility company can guess how well that went.  After my blood pressure reached its max with the phone menus and hearing over-and-over again that "my call is important" set to Muzak, I went on-line looking to see if I could fix things myself.

Good news...I was able to fix things.

I'm not sure if Verizon is aware of this, but it seems that the Actiontec wireless router that came with my FIOS line is well-known in the blogosphere for slowing down throughput.  This is particularly an issue for Apple users like me.  With Comcast, I was allowed my own super-duper Linksys router so the router had little impact on my speed.  But, the Actiontec--at least in my instance--was putting the brakes on.  

I realized this when, to test things before I tried contacting tech support, I plugged one of my laptops directly into one of the router's lan outlets.  Bingo--I went from 14.6 to 20.4 on downloads.

Various sites on the blogosphere suggest two approaches for dealing with the Actiontec slowdown.  One its to bridge the Actiontec, turning off it's wireless, and plug it into a faster wireless router--like my old Linksys.  The other approach is disable Actiontec's "automatic" channel selection and to set the wireless to a single channel.  Since, I'm not sure if either of these options is approved by Verizon, I'll not recommend or explain either one.  However, if one or both is OK--then perhaps we might beg CharlesH or one of the other employees who frequent this forum to explain how they're done.   

Let me say that now I am VERY satisfied with my speed.  Best regards.