Comments on: YouTube speed tester: Net Neutrality judo will show you when your ISP is messing with you

By: Enriquebordes

Enriquebordes — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

BUT, they donÂ´t provide numbers for a different provider, state or country.

So if I am in Spain just can compare to a “global” average (wich we are bellow, by the way, even if our ISP are charging the highest prices in Europe).

Thanks to the image in your post, though, I can see Britain is over that average. It would be cool to gather that data.

Mine is ( telefonica, Madrid, Madrid region, Spain): 1.6, 1.83, 1.88, 1.88.

By: JohnCJ

JohnCJ — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This may be affected by other factors. I’m a big downloader, so I watch youtube while downloading large (entirely legal) files.

By: Rider

Rider — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It’s useless for me, it reports that my speed is twice as fast as everyone else. This is because I pay 10$ extra a month for faster speeds. It needs a way to compare my service package to similar service packages.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Not exactly “pro-Net Neutrality judo”. More like “pro-Google judo”. The comparisons are not named. I’m not against this concept, but the data is useless.

By: Sork

Sork — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Since my town has a university with a fast backbone, and the graph for my town peaks whenever my own bandwidth drops, I suspect the students suck the bandwidth dry like vampires. Stupid privileged students.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Have not done this yet, but it’ll probably not work outside the USA.

As I am on a 3 mobile modem in Australia that brags it can deliver broadband but actually clocks in at sub dial up, ie > 56kbps…..seriously Oz internet is feeble, I doubt it’ll make much difference.

I actually called the 3 network about their awful service and they said, and I quote, “Oh we don’t support streaming video on our broadband package”

……WTF?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

“Google is giving you the ammo you need to fight back if your ISP sucks, or if it is twiddling the knobs to discriminate against Google.”

Who would do that? I’d be more concerned that my ISP would discriminate against *everyone else* thus rendering this test useless as a general measure of the bandwidth I’m getting.

It’s much more likely that an ISP makes sure youtube is smooth than, say, any site that’s not one of the most popular on the Internet.

By: michael_r

michael_r — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So Google sets up a small test group in North America with ultra-fast Internet access then slags off all the ISPs in the world for not matching their ability to download their YouTube ads.
ISP deathmatch!
Good marketing. I don’t think this is about net neutrality. Hope the fast access gets expanded.

By: MelSkunk

MelSkunk — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Well crap… apparently my fast ISP isn’t.. thanks Bell :P

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t see where it will help me. What am I going to do? Call Hughesnet and tell them they need to turn the spigot up because they aren’t on par?

Hughesnet are a bunch of bandwidth Nazis and they could care less if my connection is slow. A few youtube videos will send me into “Fair Access Policy” jail which is just another name for behavior modification; i.e. blame me for being a bandwidth hog and punish me accordingly.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

If you go to YouTube Help Forum you will see thousands of complaints about abysmally slow YouTube speeds and not a single responsible response from YouTube since last June 2009. I’m getting 68kbytes/sec much of the time but at 5am I can get normal 1-2 Mbytes/sec from YouTube. It seems to be throttled but it doesn’t seem to be consistent enough to say it’s an ISP issue, most will blame YouTube servers. Other services such as Hulu are unaffected.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

1.2mbps?!#$!

With ISP at 3.4 and area at 5.9?

AT&T sucks, wired and wirelessly.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Even thought I came up with a month's average 7Mbps on this test, Speedtest always shows me between 15 and 40Mbps. If I run both of them right now, YT has me under 10 and Speedtest puts me at 17.

By: Sork

Sork — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I got 4.0, almost as much as my ISP. Crap result compared to the rest of my country. ISP 4.3, Town 7.4, Country 5.9.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I used a speed test to corner Comcast recently about slow bandwidth. After confronting them pointblank they “reset” my service so I would get the bandwidth I paid for. When I retested it the bandwidth improved greatly (for about an hour) then it slowed down again. Itâ€™s a big improvement from before but it is still .5 mbs less than the stated minimum on my package. I guess they figure if they shave a little from everyone they win big in the end.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It must be nice to have choices. Eastern NC. We only have one choice. Embarq. Nobody else offers service here, other than a dial-up or two. I’m glad we have it, but still…it’s take it or leave it.

By: Felix Mitchell

Felix Mitchell — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Can someone explain this a bit better? Maybe it’s my hangover, but it’s not computing.

If I have a speed of 3.01 Mbps then I compare that to the package I’m buying to see if I’m being stiffed? Surely Youtube doesn’t allow streaming at 20 Mbps anyway?

For net neutrality use, It’d be good to see comparisons with other providers in a smaller geographical area. How do I know if my speed is typical of my area without that?

By: jere7my

jere7my — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

They say it is affected by many factors, including the speed of your computer. I’m not sure the “your current location” line will give you a lot of useful information about your ISP.

By: Nicholas Weaver

Nicholas Weaver — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

There are far more things than just performance. This is a very useful tool to see relative performance, but there is a lot more than could go on. In particular, I’m worried about ISPs and other doing port filtering, DNS manipulations, and a ton of other issues.

Thats why in particular we’ve developed Netalyzr (at netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu), which is a very comprehensive free tool, which runs in Java from the web browser, to detect such issues, as well as for network debugging and the basis for a general survey of Internet health.

By: Felix Mitchell

Felix Mitchell — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Wow, Nicholas, that Netalyzr is awesome. Also reports slightly higher download speed (3.8 vs 3.01 Mbps) than the above Youtube page.

By: kullervo

kullervo — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thank you! Ran the test, called my ISP, a technician will be coming out next Thursday to see why my speed is less than half their usual, which is bad enough. Nobody should live on a 1.06 when the neighbors have a 2.38!

By: AceJohnny

AceJohnny — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This has nothing to do with net neutrality, quite the opposite! All it will do is motivate ISPs to favor YouTube to artificially inflate their stats! Good for Google, not good for net neutrality.

By: owenbarron

owenbarron — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

8.33 Mbps. I love university internet! It was even faster before everyone came back from break: http://img693.imageshack.us/img693/5125/speedovertime.png
(two guesses where I am).

By: koolboy18

koolboy18 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

its great one

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The bar graph on the left shows your average YouTube download speed versus that of others on your same ISP, in your city, in your country, in your region, and world-wide. Your average download speed could be faster or slower than the average of everyone on your ISP due to regional discrepancies involving the use of fiber optic lines versus standard cable or telephone lines, the density of people utilizing the available bandwidth provided by your ISP, and the time of day at which you normally watch videos. As such, this is a highly subjective measurement, and needs more statistical analysis (standard deviation would be a good start) as well as an indication of specifically what areas the ISP measurement covers (is it just people in your city on your ISP? It doesn’t say) before it should be taken with more than a grain of salt.

By: slgalt

slgalt — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So what does it mean when the Me speed is 2.6 and the ISP speed is 5.2? Other than that Time Warner Cable sucks?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I canceled my Time Warner internet a few days ago; the final straw really was how pitifully slow youtube was. I tried listening to a playlist in the shower and I couldn’t even get through one song, listening to 2 second fragments for 15 minutes. $60/month and it could only reliably stream youtube at like 5 AM, which is not to mention that the entire service was down more often than not during the 2 weeks prior to canceling. I’m just using university net and leeching from neighbors now, and it feels great not paying TW a single dime anymore.

By: dainel

dainel — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

743Kbps, vs a global average of 3Mbps. And my country average is only 564Kbps. My ISP sucks. All the ISPs in the entire country sucks.

But this tool is great. Ammo to write the local politicians about needing to put more money to boost broadband speeds.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

My average is 7.1Mbps. Don’t hate me.

By: Shay Guy

Shay Guy — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Comcast is sub-average as it is at 2.68 Mbps (and AT&T’s worse at 1.67), but the bigger problem is being in 2.00 Mbps Houston. But even THEN I’m getting screwed at 1.58 Mbps. (Or maybe it’s just the combination of the two factors, and this is typical for Houston Comcast users — need more data.)

Wonder what they’d say at Comcast if I called and asked for an explanation?