That rating is for Google as an ISP. They provide free WiFi to the city of Mountain View which isn't always fast depending on where you are. That probably accounts for the low rating.
probably not, why would they want cached (outdated) content unless a particular site is down? Also, it's not like that content lives in servers in their office, it's in data centres all over the world (presumably)
That doesn't even make sense. For you to get to those sorts of speeds, you need jumbo frame support. While you can get that taken care of on a LAN/WAN or for Internet2, you can't magically make the Internet support it just by sprinkling Google fairy dust everywhere.
On my local lan I am able to get to about 40 MB/sec consistently over a gigabit link, and most of that is limited by the fact that I am reading from my local disk when doing so.
Also, the test probably isn't designed for internet connections that fast which could also lead to funky results.
I have a gigabit network at home and I can get up to 80MB/s, usually over 65MB/s sustained. I tried jumbo frames but due to the variety of different devices, I couldn't get everything working on the same MTU, so I had to drop back to 1500. Still get good speeds.
Now, let’s put these numbers into perspective. According to Ookla’s Net Index, the average speed for a country in Europe is around 12 Mb/second.
That's partly because most people are happy with such speeds (or at least the speed/price ratio). At home I have a subscription with 120MBit/s downstream. Speed tests usually give 130MBit/s during daytime and 140MBit/s at night.
Given that, 500MBit/s downstream is the very minimum one would expect from one of the leading Internet companies, probably located closely to one of speedtest.net's nodes.
The bandwidth each computer has access to is almost certainly not the entire bandwidth that Google gives its employees access to - if so, the per person bandwidth would be quite low.
Of course, not being a Google employee, I wouldn't know for sure.
Of course, the bandwidth is limited to gigabit (probably) to the desktop, or less if the OS/Hardware can't handle it. And I'm sure they limit bandwidth for users... imagine a PC infected with a virus, or bit torrent left running, if everyone had full gigabit upload speeds.
Why, exactly, would a consumer NIC be faster than 1Gbps? I'm sure the MV campus bandwidth consists of a ton of fiber directly to the core. They probably give everyone all the bandwidth they can stomach--no one could generate that much traffic, even if they wanted to.
I suspect too that there just might have been a fast link between the google and speedtest datacenters, maybe because google earlier rented part of the other dc. A 3 ms ping looks like it must be from a bay area dc to SFO. They should really do an avg of times/bw to other speedtest nodes in US.
It's not from a dc to the speedtest node; its from the campus. It wouldn't matter anyway. I work at Cisco and I have gigabit link to the core from my laptop. Problem is the speedtest nodes can't push the traffic fast enough to fill the pipe which is something I regularly do when working with campuses in MA and NC.
Here's something interesting - Hong Kong's got 1000Mbps, because the company is question is willing to swallow large losses for years to gain market share. Also mentioned is what it would require for the same to happen in the US -
> In the UK the fastest one can go is with Virgin 50MB
. . . well, unless you move to Bradwell Abbey or Highams Park: then you should soon get FTTP at about 100Mbps. An Openreach guy was telling me this afternoon it should just be a few months.
We (Bournemotuth) were due to be getting Fibrecity, 100mb to the home but it looks like they switched on a few roads, dug up a whole lot more then tanked. There original big fanfare plan was to route the fibre through the sewer system rather than digging up the streets again...doesn't seem that panned out too well!
Ziggo in The Netherlands. Television, telephone, and internet all in one for 67 Euro per month. They have Internet-only subscriptions as well, but the whole package deal is more attractive ;).
More importantly, Google is one of the world's largest ISPs (practically Tier 1) and maybe the world's largest CDN. The speed of their Internet is quite obviously limited by Speedtest or some artificial limiting, not their lines.
Google's offices wouldn't necessarily have as much bandwidth as their data centers. The real surprise here is that Google gives their offices massive connections (presumably to the GBone).
It's not that unlikely. Consider that the offices may have to push significant amounts of code/data back and forth between their offices and their data centers. You probably want to minimize the amount of developer time wasted.
Consider this question: Let us say the cost of an infrastructure at google HQ is X. X is the cost regardless of internet. Now let us say you have Y which is the price of an average inernet connection for google offices. Or you pay 4 * Y to get that connection. Ok lets make it 10 * Y. Whatever. The point is that if it makes your workers a bit more productive (5000 people?) lets say 3%. I think that 3% productivity on developers translates to WAY above the price of that connection.
This reminds me of the good old days, the 90s, when I was a teenager and finally upgraded to a ~50KB/s cable modem from my puny 33600 baud modem. That was a game changer, I even ran an FTP server for a while =) It's been getting faster ever since then, but I never again had that feeling of "OMG it's so fast let's download something for the hell of it".
My first job was in that era at my hometown ISP. I got a discount on shotgun modems. We could pirate Doom and Photoshop 3 on the T1. Nothing ever seemed that fast, even now when I have a 35 mbps fios line.
I think the fastest connection I ever had was back in the day when I worked at CERN. They host(ed?) a European internet hub, so rates were pretty damn quick.
To be honest I can't remember. This was 10 - 12 years ago though so what was absurd then is probably pretty standard now. It was a heck of a lot quicker than the T1 line we had in the Physics dept back in London :)
It's easy to get spoiled. 12 years ago my computer was two hops away from an OC-192 and back then I didn't even have anything interesting to try and download (I think I mostly downloaded SunOS ISO's).
Wow, I did not realize my internet connection at work is actally that good... I ran speed test before some month ago and it was in the same range. (see http://speedtest.net/result/1147935298.png). Back then I though "not bad". But that a post about something like that would make it the homepage of HN...
Am I the only one who thought they meant latency? I like my speeds well enough, but I could use some reduced latency. I guess there isn't much one can do about this, though.
Seriously. I wish I could get 10mbps internet at home...I haven't been able to do so in almost 10 years of living in a very big city and the suburbs of another very major city...
Any of us could have that if we felt OK paying for an OC3 or OC12 connection at your home or office, right? I'm sure plenty of companies and universities have such service.
I don't get the point of this post. If the screenshot said MB/s then that was something.
My Apt has a corporate internet freely available for the residents and I always get 500 - 700Mbps.
And now for a bit of perspective, here in India I am working with a 512kbps connection, which is the only one I can get without any 'fair use' caps. The latency for the fastest DNS is about 350ms, and on weekends, my bandwidth can be as low as 200kbps.
Are you in a major city or a more outlying area? Is that a wired, or wireless, connection? Even wired access could have wireless backhaul... assuming yours is wired, is that the reason for the slowness, or have they really been mad at work all over India laying conduit with copper instead of fiber?
It is is same all over the country. That's the only plan without any 'fair usage cap'. You might get 4Mbps for $55, but after 15GB of usage, the bandwidth will be cut down for the remaining month.
Also, 3G just launched in India. No more than 50 cities have it, and the maximum they can provide is 32Mbps, again with some fair usage cap!
Good but nothing special, i live in lithuania and i download files at 140MBit/s .I am using cheapest my internet provider plan and if i want to pay more i could get faster internet.
Is this really "mind-blowing"? I can upgrade my personal home fiber to 400/400Mbits for 6000NOK (1100USD) per month here in Oslo. Expensive yeah, but not too unreasonable.
This is impressive, but it loses a little luster when you realize their proximity to the testing server.
SpeedTest's SF server is hosted by MonkeyBrains.net. A quick traceroute shows their servers are just one step away from Cogent's SF backbone. I suspect whoever ran this test has fewer than four steps between them and the testing server, and the slowest link between them is the gigabit ethernet port to their desk.
99 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 175 ms ] threadSpeedtest uses servers in the same city, and game downloads probably do as well (CDNs) but the average case is likely significantly slower.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumbo_frame
Also, the test probably isn't designed for internet connections that fast which could also lead to funky results.
That's partly because most people are happy with such speeds (or at least the speed/price ratio). At home I have a subscription with 120MBit/s downstream. Speed tests usually give 130MBit/s during daytime and 140MBit/s at night.
Given that, 500MBit/s downstream is the very minimum one would expect from one of the leading Internet companies, probably located closely to one of speedtest.net's nodes.
Of course, not being a Google employee, I wouldn't know for sure.
As for the numbers, I think 12Mbs is quite an overestimation of reality: http://www.speedtests.net/world/europe/
In the UK the fastest one can go is with Virgin 50MB. Too bad then they force you to use their own cable modem which is a piece of shit.
http://www.broadband-tv-phone.com/virgin-media-cable-broadba...
100MB is also available in Ireland, through UPC:
http://www.upc.ie/broadband/hundred/ (monthly cost here is roughly double the UK price. Typical! Despite the recession, it's still rip-off republic.)
Here's something interesting - Hong Kong's got 1000Mbps, because the company is question is willing to swallow large losses for years to gain market share. Also mentioned is what it would require for the same to happen in the US -
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/business/06digi.html?_r=2&...
BT are also bringing 100mb broadband in, at which speed I'm sure you'll be able to hit their ridiculously stingy monthly caps in mere minutes.
. . . well, unless you move to Bradwell Abbey or Highams Park: then you should soon get FTTP at about 100Mbps. An Openreach guy was telling me this afternoon it should just be a few months.
(FWIW, my ping is 450ms)
I value customer service over raw speed, so I have Speakeasy DSL. It's not the fastest, but it is always up.
I live 20 minutes from one of the largest airports in the country.
Also, 3G just launched in India. No more than 50 cities have it, and the maximum they can provide is 32Mbps, again with some fair usage cap!
p.s. i pay 17usb per month
SpeedTest's SF server is hosted by MonkeyBrains.net. A quick traceroute shows their servers are just one step away from Cogent's SF backbone. I suspect whoever ran this test has fewer than four steps between them and the testing server, and the slowest link between them is the gigabit ethernet port to their desk.
http://bit.ly/infdfc (apologies for URL shortener, on mobile).