I think if you could prove that, it’d make for some interesting lawyering…
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The tech told me as much when I had it installed. They only view Ookla results as “official” because of some bs about “their servers are optimized for TWC somesuch” and “them other tests you don’t know how much bandwidth they have to dole out or how far they are” bs.
@ESmith is right - I’m not guaranteed any level of service, just “up to 200 Mbps” and a buncha disclaimers like “results not typical.”
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TWC/Spectrum is the worst game in our neck of the woods. They shape traffic no matter the contract. I had a residential package that I upgraded to an enterprise package with Service Level Guarantee. Then TWC at the time delivered the exact same performance as before. I ended up having a lawyer send a letter to get a refund on 6 months of service and to be released from the terms of the contract as they were not being met.
AT&T is not perfect, but they are far more honest in advertising than TWC from the experiences I have had over the years. That said, AT&T is not available in my neighborhood, but I’m on Verizon/Frontier Fios. It has been a positive, though the switch to frontier I heard was rocky for a few.
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As an insider, all I can say is so much understatement.
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Even many business class subscribers got badly burned in that transition.
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Here are some results from mine today. All are around 900 Mbps up and down. They seem to be delivering what they say they will. Note you have to use a wire in most cases to get these speeds. On WiFi you won’t see speeds like this (until years in the future).
- http://speedtest.xfinity.com/results/J5OT0YIXRHT1RPS
- http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6494746469
- http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/19279414
Some of the tests max out around 300 Mbps but I suspect this is a server side limitation since I can max out my connection with things like popular torrents which are sourced from many different servers in aggregate.The bandwidth test can only go as high as the server will allow it to and some are not gigabit connection ready.
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Show off 
It is interesting to see that with a fast enough connection you can see the service limitations of the sites you visit.
I recently switch from Fios which I had since it’s inception in our area ~9 years to Spectrum. Spectrum’s base package is twice as fast 100Mbs but their router sucks hard so hard. It drops Wifi every hour: on 2.4 GHz it goes out for 1-2 minutes every 60 minutes, 5GHz drops for 2-3 minutes every 30 minutes.
Wired is fine so I suspect their radios are overheating and reseting. I bought a DOCSIS 3.0 router to only find out that none support voice, you have to use their provided router for that. Grrr…
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Thanks!!
…and some characters…
I heard that when we were dumping Uverse - I was ready with my own modem and router. Works better and saves the rental fee too.
“Business class” service is kind of a misnomer. Sometimes it means what Verizon used to call CMB (Consumer/Mass Business) on shared platforms with capacity contention, sometimes it means enterprise-class dedicated lines engineered to meet whatever service levels the customer negotiated.
CMB-class business service can come with some sort of rudimentary service guarantee, but simply isn’t designed for sustained usage. It’s priced more than residential service under the assumption that usage will be heavier. The equipment with a business-heavy subscriber base tend to see mid-life upgrades sooner and more often than those with residential-heavy subscriber bases. DMS is served via a CMB-class platform and seems to manage the advertised 500 Mb/s symmetric consistently.
Enterprise-grade services are expensive - typically >10x more than comparable-speed CMB service - but are truly engineered to perform to customer expectations. If you negotiate a gigabit pipe with a minimum sustained throughput of 100 Mb/s, burst capacity up to 500 Mb/s, best-effort up to 1 Gb/s and sub-10ms latency to all points on the carrier’s network, and 99.999% uptime, the carrier will quote you some astronomical figure to install it with a nosebleed price per month to provide it. The installation price covers installation of a truly dedicated line to your premise and some of the capital to upgrade their network. The considerable monthly fee covers the expense of service as well as paying down the upfront cost of their own network upgrades. In exchange for all this expense, you should then receive the benefit of service that you can hammer on 24x7, and make the carrier jump should they fail to deliver.
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I have gigapower and it has been great
On Wifi. (802.11AC)
On Ethernet
Hi Robert,
Can you run a similar test on speedof.me or one of the other “non-ookla” speed tests?
Thanks!
I wouldn’t trust that test at higher speeds. It appears they don’t have the bandwidth on their server side to handle gigabit testing. The upload test is clearly capped around 100 Mbps.
Directly after running that I test I uploaded a Linux Mint ISO to Google Drive at 520 Mbps. So that test is definitely not reliable.
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After doing some research here I think Ookla is going to be the best and most reliable test you can possibly get. Their tests show a higher value because their servers have more bandwidth and they have more money to throw at the problem. They’re in the business of providing bandwidth testing directly to industry customers so that’s how they make their money.
The goal of the test is to find out how fast the connection to your computer is and that’s how to do it, throw tons of bandwidth (and money) at it. Another test showing a lower value simply means the other test doesn’t have enough bandwidth to max out your connection on that route, or it’s an unrelated issue like a collocation facility with limited bandwidth between carriers.
Long story short I think you can trust Ookla more than anyone else. There’s a reason why internet service providers use them and trust them more than anyone else.
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You might try this if you aren’t getting the speed from some sites - change to a different domain name server in your settings. I had issues with netflix on my current provider, switched away from their default DMS settings to openDNS and my buffering issues went away for the most part. I do not spend a lot per month on my internet connection as my heaviest use typically is netflix and uploads of images to talk threads here. If you have issues reaching some locations you believe may be throttled back by your provider - try a different DNS setting first as a possible free solution to the issue.
Luke,
Have you got the pace 5268ac gateway? I hate that POS. Try turning off IPv6 support. I used to have to reset mine constantly until I did that. Now it’s much more stable. I get line speed fairly regularly. FYI…
Jeff.
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I checked and it’s an Arris NVG599 gateway. I’ll try disabling IPv6 for a while anyway and see if it improves things.
Late to the game – but did this work for you? I’m curious. Old client of mine a while back had an Arris device as well, had stability problems all the time, after trying a variety of things we disabled IPv6 and that did work. But that was a year and change ago, and with a different service to boot.
This helped maybe a bit but the suspect WiFi remains. I’m likely going to get a stand alone access point and just bypass their wireless completely.
Ubiquiti unifi. Put in two UAP IW ACs and have never looked back…