FCC measures actual Internet speeds

[Sonny]

FiOS dominates as FCC measures actual Internet speeds

[z-monster]

Oh wow!

Cablevision's stats just plain suck, period!

[Stargazer77517]

Wish they would have included Hughes.net, It would be at the bottom or pretty close I suspect.

[pookie]

What about U-Verse? AT&T in the chart must be DSL and not U-Verse (fiber just like FiOS). I have been pretty happy with it and it is way faster than Time Warner.

[Blue Moon]

How your ISP rates on the FCC internet test as data packets transverse across Level 3's backbone and the other five domestic Tier 1 Internet Providers certainly sheds some insight on making your buy decision however it is much better to check your own connection because how you connect to the Internet backbone is much more important and usually the bottleneck when it comes to Internet experience. It's easy to test your Internet bandwidth speed as well as packet loss and jitter at speedtest.net or other similar bandwidth monitoring sites. Make sure that you don't just run the speed test as that only measures raw speed but not quality. When you run the ping test it will give you an actual line connection score that determines packet loss and jitter.

The ping test reports how long it takes a packet of data to travel from your PC to the test server and back as well as packet loss. The jitter test shows how stable your connection is, which usually speaks to latency or the time delay that network devices, interconnects, and even the actual fiber cause as their imperfections slow down the speed of light.

You want a high number for the speed test and low numbers for ping and jitter test to ensure the best possible Internet experience. Low Ping and Jitter scores are especially important for any critical data such as voice or video performance.

Advanced users can also do a trace route which is tracert on windows boxes, tracepath on Linux, PathPing on NT, or traceroute6 for the new IPv6 for a better look behind the curtain. The technical challenge with a good Internet connection has always been what's referred to as the last mile. You're at the end of the last mile. The better connection you have to the actual backbone, the better your experience will be.

Blue Moon