There has been a lot of talk about Google’s plans to deploy 1 Gb/s fiber to some lucky communities. The City of Santa Clarita is pushing hard to be recognized, asking its Facebook followers to submit videos explaining why we should receive super high speed internet access. And today, The Signal wrote an Editorial to Google promising that the SCV would be Google’s forevermore if the company chose us for their project.
All that made me wonder, just how fast is Santa Clarita now?
Let’s find out. Follow the steps below:
- Close all of your PC’s open browser windows, streaming media programs (like Windows Media Player, Zune or iTunes) and just leave open SCVTalk. Make sure no one on your home network is watching Netflix or streaming audio
- Click this link: http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ , a popular broadband speed test website
- Choose “Los Angeles” as your location to test from
- Let the test run
- With your download numbers in hand, vote in the poll below
Loading ...What the numbers mean:
My internet provider is AT&T Yahoo DSL. I’ve had them for about seven years and well, they aren’t advancing with the times. I get about 2.43 megabits per second download speed and 430,000 bits upload speed. A megabit should not be confused with a megabyte. A bit is about 1/8th of a byte. I can download files, in other words, at about .307 megabytes per second, which means it would take me about 16-20 seconds to download a 5 megabyte MP3 audio file.
My dad, on the other hand, has a Time Warner Cable internet connection and routinely gets between 15 and 20 megabits per second download. That averages out to about 2.5 megabytes per second, meaning he could download a 1gigabyte movie file in a little over 5 minutes.
Now what Google is proposing is about 5o times as fast as the internet connection my dad enjoys on the best of days. We’re no longer talking about downloading movies in minutes or even seconds; no we’re talking about eliminating the concept of ”downloading” altogether. Basically all media would be instantly accessible to your computer; in fact, under ideal circumstances it could be faster for you to access a High Def YouTube video than to access a High Def video on a computer in the room next to you in your house.
Of course, you will still be limited by your source’s internet speed. It’s not likely that YouTube or Netflix could actually send you a movie at full 1 gb/s but still, the improvement in your download time would be remarkable.
So yes. I concur with the Signal and the City. Bring the internet to me Google, with great dispatch!
Time Warner Cable, Saugus. 14 down, 1 up.
Petz is 9.8 down and . 9 up on Saugus. Is he getting what he pays for-I do not have the turbo option.
Time Warner? I’m non-turbo as well
5.7 AT&T fiber optics. I have the middle of the road option.
I’m .18 up, .26 down. Thats on my business laptop wireless link to the 2-wire modem. No wonder my son has been hounding me to upgrade. He’s a pretty serious gamer and has been complaining about the speed for a while now. Maybe it is time to upgrade.
Time Warner Cable, Valencia: 22 down, 1 up. Which do I vote for, 22 or 1?
The 22 Barbara. UPload speeds are typically slower, in your case, much slower. But most people only care about the download speeds anyway.
UVerse Fiber at cheapest level: 1.43 download, .95Mps upload.
ATT Uverse: 17.2 up, 1.5 down
15.87 Mbps down, 1.47Mbps Up.
Speedtest.net says 24.92 Mbps down, 1.52Mbps up.
AT&T Uverse here.
Here’s the problem with the the concept of Gigabit internet. Theres no hardware out there that can truly support it. So its kinda pie in the sky anyway.
Gigabit isn’t so far off. Burbank Water and Power is about to make it available to their customers via their fiber optic network (granted, I don’t think it’ll be as reasonably priced as Google is saying, but the speed will be there).
Oops, premature post.
Meant to say that Burbank’s gigabit will be available to the business community, which will be able to support the high costs for the proper equipment. Home-based gigabit networking can’t be supported yet, really.
Only problem I see is that no one is following the instructions from Google. I know Google well, they were a client of mine in 2007-2008, and following directions is important to them.
Google doesn’t want videos, the City of Santa Clarita does – to get ideas I guess, or some type of video response in their RFI. But the instructions from Google state to “submit a nomination” for your city through the Google Projects website. The Cities with the most “nominations” are going to be looked at by Google and those that don’t follow instructions will be ignored or glossed over.
So why all the video requests and no talk about the nominations from the City?
For more details visit the Google Projects website
http://www.google.com/appserve/fiberrfi/
Jeff cable will always be faster than dsl which is limited by distances and crappy phone lines.
Speed test results (in Mbps):
24.49 download
1.77 upload
I use TW Cable.
I’m just off Lyons Ave. Close to the CO, fasted speed in town!