When will we get FIOS internet, or Xfinity, at 2.5Gbit/sec? Any time soon?

[Ajay]

Do you guys with Gbit internet actually get speeds anywhere near that?
When I'm doing downloads, they are often capped well below the 150Mbit rate I get from Speetest.net, etc.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm surprised you don't have symmetrical with fios.

Oh, I do. Note the "AND" "faster than 1Gbit/sec". IOW, we have 1Gbit/sec symmetrical, but not 2Gbit/sec symmetrical, which is what I thought that the poster above was mentioning an (HFC cable) provider was going to have.

 

[mnewsham]

Do you guys with Gbit internet actually get speeds anywhere near that?

Yup

 

[SamirD]

Do you guys with Gbit internet actually get speeds anywhere near that?
When I'm doing downloads, they are often capped well below the 150Mbit rate I get from Speetest.net, etc.

Depending on where in the world you are, I would call your isp and get them to fix that.

 

[DaaQ]

Do you guys with Gbit internet actually get speeds anywhere near that?
When I'm doing downloads, they are often capped well below the 150Mbit rate I get from Speetest.net, etc.

I usually use the Provider's speed test site, OOkla's app and Fast.com to test with.
Fast.com is only one I've seen 1gig+ on, the other two are generally 890-950ish.
The upload is provisioned at 50M but usually reaches 60-65. I couod have sworn when they first launched 1gig it was 60M upload, they switched to 50 later on, but I could be wrong. No documentation of it.

 

[DaaQ]

Oh, I do. Note the "AND" "faster than 1Gbit/sec". IOW, we have 1Gbit/sec symmetrical, but not 2Gbit/sec symmetrical, which is what I thought that the poster above was mentioning an (HFC cable) provider was going to have.

Yes it is an HFC network.
I didn't really latch on to the 2 or 2.5 part, it was the symmetrical part. Because as it stands now, my area only uses 3 low frequency carriers for the upstream, we were supposed to be getting a fourth but that has not materialized.
This was completely unexpected information. I did expect WIFi6 to come, but not symmetrical.

My personal running theory is they are going to expand the OFDM blocks from 16 to 32 channels, and they are going to have to implement an OFDM block for the upstream.
I imagine they are also going to have to eliminate QAM tuners entirely for video subscriptions, but that is mostly related to noise.

I will find out more next week. Cause it's been bugging me how they are going to implement it.

 

[Ajay]

Depending on where in the world you are, I would call your isp and get them to fix that.

I usually use the Provider's speed test site, OOkla's app and Fast.com to test with.
Fast.com is only one I've seen 1gig+ on, the other two are generally 890-950ish.
The upload is provisioned at 50M but usually reaches 60-65. I couod have sworn when they first launched 1gig it was 60M upload, they switched to 50 later on, but I could be wrong. No documentation of it.

Well my issue is OT, sufficient to say I’m going to look into it and be jealous of all you FIOS guys. Verizon pulled out of NH just months before FIOS was going to go live in my city.

 

[DaaQ]

Well my issue is OT, sufficient to say I’m going to look into it and be jealous of all you FIOS guys. Verizon pulled out of NH just months before FIOS was going to go live in my city.

Create a new thread, because I find it interesting that 150 is max speed. This is a cable provider correct?

 

[SamirD]

I usually use the Provider's speed test site, OOkla's app and Fast.com to test with.
Fast.com is only one I've seen 1gig+ on, the other two are generally 890-950ish.
The upload is provisioned at 50M but usually reaches 60-65. I couod have sworn when they first launched 1gig it was 60M upload, they switched to 50 later on, but I could be wrong. No documentation of it.

I've found dslreports speedtest to be the most accurate in the US across the 4 isp accounts I have. I've spiked to 700Mbps on my 500Mbps account on that test, so I'm sure it will hit 1Gb+

 

[DaaQ]

I've found dslreports speedtest to be the most accurate in the US across the 4 isp accounts I have. I've spiked to 700Mbps on my 500Mbps account on that test, so I'm sure it will hit 1Gb+

They usually over provision, i think by 20%. Of course the 1gig service is pushing the max bandwidth on a 16 channel OFDM block, and marketing, I think the theoretical max is just under 1000M but 1gig looks better than 920M, 950M, or 970M whichever it is.
Usually on the 500M tier I see download speeds of around 700.

 

[SamirD]

They usually over provision, i think by 20%. Of course the 1gig service is pushing the max bandwidth on a 16 channel OFDM block, and marketing, I think the theoretical max is just under 1000M but 1gig looks better than 920M, 950M, or 970M whichever it is.
Usually on the 500M tier I see download speeds of around 700.

Oh I meant dslreports can handle 1GB+, not my connection. My connection drops back to 500+ after about 10 seconds, which is the nice little overprovision for burst traffic that a lot of isps seem to be doing.

 

[mnewsham]

If you're using 1gbps NICs, with TCP/IP packet overhead you're maxing out at ~945mbps, anything beyond that is just testing error.

My ONT has a 1gbps NIC, my router has a 1gbps NIC, my PC has a 1gbps NIC, none of them are gonna break 1gbps despite the fact Fast.com and DSLreports will both show me going beyond 1gbps occasionally. It's not actually beyond 1gbps though, the network interfaces aren't capable of it.

 

[SamirD]

If you're using 1gbps NICs, with TCP/IP packet overhead you're maxing out at ~945mbps, anything beyond that is just testing error.

My ONT has a 1gbps NIC, my router has a 1gbps NIC, my PC has a 1gbps NIC, none of them are gonna break 1gbps despite the fact Fast.com and DSLreports will both show me going beyond 1gbps occasionally. It's not actually beyond 1gbps though, the network interfaces aren't capable of it.

What about if things are actually moving full duplex for blips at a time? Would that not contribute to momentary spikes above 1Gb/s?

 

[mnewsham]

What about if things are actually moving full duplex for blips at a time? Would that not contribute to momentary spikes above 1Gb/s?

Full duplex means 1gbps in each direction, at no point could you have more than 1gbps going in a single direction.

 

[SamirD]

Full duplex means 1gbps in each direction, at no point could you have more than 1gbps going in a single direction.

Yes, but then the aggregate speed could be in excess of 1Gbps on a speedtest site if it is accurately measuring the duplex traffic.

 

[mnewsham]

Yes, but then the aggregate speed could be in excess of 1Gbps on a speedtest site if it is accurately measuring the duplex traffic.

But none of the sites do

Fast.com, speedtest.net, deslreports, all show download and upload separately.

 

[jhansman]

Interesting reading. I live out in the sticks where we're lucky to have "high speed" internet at all. Just got an offer from Xfinity in the mail—75Mbps for $30/mo for a year. Whoo hoo! In a chat session with a sales rep, she offered me 100 MBps and their "basic" TV for $80/mo for a year. What to do?

 

[SamirD]

But none of the sites do

Fast.com, speedtest.net, deslreports, all show download and upload separately.

They do, but the small amount of return traffic would grow to more on gigabit link, and if they are counting that as part of the total data transferred...otherwise there is no other way to explain a test results in excess of 1Gbps.

 

[SamirD]

Interesting reading. I live out in the sticks where we're lucky to have "high speed" internet at all. Just got an offer from Xfinity in the mail—75Mbps for $30/mo for a year. Whoo hoo! In a chat session with a sales rep, she offered me 100 MBps and their "basic" TV for $80/mo for a year. What to do?

Be careful with the 'offers' and find out what the real cost is that they will eventually charge you. Also, watch for contracts like the old cell phone days as they also have termination clauses and penalties.

Honestly, I'd find out what their fastest real speed you can get is, how much it is and go from there. To give you a comparison, in SF, I pay just under $100/mo for 500/15.

 

[mnewsham]

They do, but the small amount of return traffic would grow to more on gigabit link, and if they are counting that as part of the total data transferred...otherwise there is no other way to explain a test results in excess of 1Gbps.

Easy, testing error.

Fast.com frequently shows me peaking beyond 1.3gbps, it's clearly error, I can monitor my local PC network usage and it's never above 1gbps according to ANY of my records. Even when accounting for the 5-10mbps of traffic in the other direction (and it's usually below that), it's not even close to 1.3gbps total traffic.


pic related, the upload at 1.4gbps is obviously not accurate at all.

 

[SamirD]

Wow, that's a really bad test site then.

Try the same thing on dslreports.com/speedtest. I'm curious if you see the same results there on the upload.

 

[mnewsham]

Wow, that's a really bad test site then.

Try the same thing on dslreports.com/speedtest. I'm curious if you see the same results there on the upload.

It's been about 12-18 months since i've been able to get anything beyond 700mbps on DSLreports servers. ALL of the local servers for them don't connect at all and time-out, so the closest server it tests to is like 500 miles away.

But if I go back through my screenshots, i've got one from 2017 that has me going a good ~40mbps beyond what a 1gbps NIC is capable of (945mbps).



And DURING the actual test, it would show 1.1 or 1.2gbps peaks.

Again though, it's gotta be testing error.

 

[SamirD]

Thank you for that! Now I wonder if any of the testing sites are real at all. Maybe I'm not seeing spikes in actual data transfer, but a gimmick from all the speed test sites working on cahoots with the isps...

 

[mnewsham]

Thank you for that! Now I wonder if any of the testing sites are real at all. Maybe I'm not seeing spikes in actual data transfer, but a gimmick from all the speed test sites working on cahoots with the isps...

It's well known that some ISPs will favor traffic to speedtest servers. So wouldn't shock me at all.

 

[DaaQ]

To add to this, I use Fast.com if I have a customer that plays speed test all day. We have a few.
Our speed test site says it is hosted by Ookla, but it is the last server before it gets out of the managed network. So it's the defacto site for us to test on per company policies.
I am glad you brought the NIC limitations up, I had kinda forgot about that, I only have 500M service because I don't have a working machine that can take advantage of higher. (old core 2 duo laptop atm)
I have seen plenty of instances tho where CPU isn't able to process the network speeds and people using Xbox 1's to speed test with ect.

@mnewsham so the max a 1gbps NIC will only be able to get to about 945? For instance an Intel NIC? Not factoring in any software bloat or background processes?