FCC: Test your bandwidth <s>for better 'net policy</s> FOR GREAT JUSTICE
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LeonardoWake up and smell the glaciersEagle River, AlaskaIcrontian
edited March 2010
I'm wondering if the results the government will pull in will be skewed. This has the potential to be very good, unbiased research material, but I'm afraid the government won't get a broad enough sampling of users.
Who is most likely to participate in this test? Wouldn't it be people like us, tech-aware persons who take an interest in these matters? I would imagine that most of us (here at Icrontic and our counterparts everywhere) already have the fastest broadband available that we can afford. People like my parents, who have the slowest broadband they can find (recently upgraded from dial-up), are not the type of people would participate in this study.
There are millions of people like my parents, who are quite content with slow connections. These are people who don't know any better or who don't spend much time on the Internet. There's all the demographic that's mainly passive, watching lots of TV. It's my belief that these groups of people are one of the reasons for relatively slow Internet connections in the US. The demand for better broadband is not as high as it could be.
Even if it's a biased sampling, the results will still get us faster Internet, because the FCC will be able to see that our real-world speeds are not jiving with what ISPs claim to deliver.
There are two different tests which are performed which appear to use different algorithms to determine a value for upload, download, latency, and jitter. I would recommend that if one wants to engage in this test, it would be appropriate to run both algorithms at multiple times of the day and on multiple days of the week. Otherwise, you do not get an accurate representation of how much the network load fluctuates from moment to moment.
I think it's a catch 22. Sure our speeds will be faster, which is great. But if the government get their fingers in the internet pot, it's only a matter of time before they start trying to control what gets posted or what content people access.
You give the federal government in this country far too much credit. They would never be able to competently filter the Internet. If they even tried to there would be way too much of an outcry in this country. I mean, we can't even get decent health insurance reforms without people threatening to revolt, imagine the reaction actual censorship would garner!
Thrax
🐌Austin, TX Icrontian
Comments
Who is most likely to participate in this test? Wouldn't it be people like us, tech-aware persons who take an interest in these matters? I would imagine that most of us (here at Icrontic and our counterparts everywhere) already have the fastest broadband available that we can afford. People like my parents, who have the slowest broadband they can find (recently upgraded from dial-up), are not the type of people would participate in this study.
There are millions of people like my parents, who are quite content with slow connections. These are people who don't know any better or who don't spend much time on the Internet. There's all the demographic that's mainly passive, watching lots of TV. It's my belief that these groups of people are one of the reasons for relatively slow Internet connections in the US. The demand for better broadband is not as high as it could be.