FCC testing your broadband speed

Boing Boing and others have pointed out that the federal government is testing broadband speeds. I tried it, but the java applet seems to fail before it is complete.

Clicking the test button opens a small window in front of the webpage and first asks for your address, but not e-mail or name. The privacy statement says that it will record the IP address as well.

Then it runs a download, upload, latency and jitter (variation in latency) test. I was never able to gee it to go past the latency test.

It would fail to show the jitter results and then show what looks like the java download page through the window of the test. Since it is only beta, perhaps it will be fixed when the final version is out.

Since Verizon FIOS promises 20 MB/s down and 5 up, it appears I am getting what I paid for.

(The Consumer Broadband Test )