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Comment by cde-v | Hacker News Reader

Unless I missed it, the article doesn't mention once that to get 10 Mbps, you need to pay for 100 Mbps because you NEVER get remotely close to the advertised speeds.

Pretending you get the advertised speeds reeks of industry shilling...

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You should complain to your provider if your average speed is that far below the advertised one, it should be within 10%.

Should be within 10%? Where is that posted? I pay for xfinity 1gbps, and rarely get 50% of the "advertised maximum". I would switch to fiber in a heartbeat if I could, but my little street is the only street without enough customers to "make it worth it".

Interestingly, at least in my neighborhood fiber has similar problems to cable, according to the guy who installed fiber at my house. They are perfectly willing to oversell what the connection into the neighborhood is able to support. And the people who get limited first when it's too busy, according to him, are those with Gigabit connections.

You're never gonna get rated port rates in a speed test, there is overhead to contend with, and so thats reasonable considering overhead for the speed test. This is even more so when consider that on a 1gbps the fastest the interface you're handing off with is 1gbps

Common practice is to set the throttling limit for a cable modem at 10-20% above your advertised speed. On my half-gig service with my current carrier I clock between 550-640 Mbps. When I had a 150 Mbps Xfinity plan, I regularly clocked 180 Mbps.

If you're regularly getting less than your advertised speed, either the local distribution is over-extended and badly in need of an upgrade, or the line to your house is trash. Either way, you should be complaining.

Also, note that if you have 1 Gbps service from Xfinity, you have fiber out at the street, they just bring coax into your home.

When you start getitng into gig speeds, you're gonna run lower than 1gbps in a speed test, because of overhead too, I'd note.

"Up to" is the advertised rate, so check your SLA if you have a leg to stand on.

Most home users don't get close to advertised speeds because of WiFi interference.

That's not the same thing - you measure it at the router.

I get a peak speed of slightly over my 35Mbs limit on my Vodaphone FTC - can sustain 30-31 Mbs for big downloads eg from steam.

Sure, but most people don't.

And once you get to the multi-hundreds speeds, wifi might literally not be able to support the speeds.

Don’t measure at the router, most home routers are crap. Measure it at the modem.

My parents have an actual 1Gig link but you’d never be able to tell unless you removed the router because it just can’t keep up.

Don't think most people have a separate modem - all in one modems is how the UK does it.

I measure from my actual elderly laptop running over the Fastest devolo POE kit.

I do need to investigate getting a better router than the standard one Voda provide.

I mean most home users can't or won't bother wiring their devices to their router.

I ran physical ethernet cable to my TVs when I built my house; just for this reason.

Otherwise, most placed I've lived, the cable modem was so close to the TV, that it's easier to just run a short wire instead of messing with WIFI passwords.

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