Speed Bumps

November 21, 2007

The Show

Are you getting the high-speed internet you're paying for?

(Click here to watch the video)

When the telephone and cable companies are trying to sell you internet access, speed is everything. Some promise speeds of "up to 8Mbps." Some go as high as "up to 25Mbps." But how well do they explain what those numbers mean?

Pay attention to two small but important words: "up to." Sometimes they can be a shorthand way of saying "up to a theoretical maximum speed you may not actually experience, because your wires are old, or you have a lot of neighbours sharing the connection, or because we're still upgrading our equipment in your area."

For this segment, we did a series of speed tests on home internet service across the country. As Erica Johnson reports, there's some very crafty fine print behind all the marketing.

November 21, 2007
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Smart shopping for internet access

You may be surprised to learn how many choices you have for your internet access. Beyond the big cable and phone companies, there are scores of smaller providers. Here are some guidelines:

  • DSL access uses your phone line. In general, it provides a more consistent speed than cable, although that rate of speed is determined by many factors, including how far your house is from the switching station, and on the condition of the wires.
  • Cable is usually faster than DSL for bursts of raw download speed, but it is also more variable. You will usually share a cable connection with your neighbours, so your speed may drop if everybody is online at the same time.
  • If you are the kind of person who uses a CD tray as a cup holder, you might benefit from hands-on attention from a smaller ISP. Canadian ISP.com has a large listing of alternative ISPs across the country, along with reviews.
  • Check your computer. Your speed could be slow because of viruses or spyware.
  • Check your wiring. If you have DSL, replacing the phone cord from your computer to your demarcation point (that's the spot dividing your own wires from the ones the local phone company is responsible for) can mean a big improvement in speeds. Make sure you have filters on all of your phones.
  • If you use an online speed test, remember that your ISP can manage traffic flow. You may get a quicker connection to the test site than to anything else, which could make you think your overall speed is faster than it is.
  • Remember that your speed could be fast to your provider and slow down at the next hop on the internet. Much of the internet is outside your provider's control.
  • Ask your provider what its "contention ratio" is. Some providers can oversubscribe lines in certain neighbourhoods, and this can slow you down.
  • If you have a bundle, ask if it's really saving you money. Can you buy a modem instead of renting one?

November 21, 2007
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More results, this time in a chart

You've been generous with your time and your bandwidth, running countless speed tests for our collective information and amusement. Thanks.

You've posted far more results than anyone would ever want to read. But here are the first 100, because sometimes more is more.

Provider Province City Neighbourhood Down Up
Aliant NB Moncton
1316 503
Aliant NF Corner Brook
1370 440
Aliant NF St. John's Southlands 2024 515
Aliant NS Halifax
1523 526
Aliant NS Halifax Meagers Grant 1538 497
Aliant NS Halifax Near downtown 1284 371
Bell ON Alliston
4327 671
Bell ON Hagersville
4300
Bell ON London
82 287
Bell ON Mississauga Meadowval 4552 646
Bell ON Niagara-on-the-Lake
3441 678
Bell ON Orangeville
1481 295
Bell ON Ottawa Downtown 2555 427
Bell ON St. Catharines
1469 321
Bell ON St. Thomas
4330
Bell ON Toronto
1836 678
Bell ON Toronto Central West Etobicoke 4307 673
Bell ON Toronto Downtown 4252 1645
Bell ON Toronto Central 2502 404
Bell ON Toronto
6832 782
Bell ON Toronto Queen & Spadina 481 1570
Bell ON Toronto Yonge / St. Clair 605 404
Bell ON Toronto Humber Bay 4304 1653
Bell ON Toronto Downtown 4330 550
Bell ON Toronto The Annex 3827 437
Bell ON Waterdown
1016 669
Bell QC Cantley
4320 625
Bell QC Gatineau Plateau 4220 650
Bell QC Montreal
3000 500
Bell QC Pierrefonds
575 138
Bell (Basic Lite) ON Hamilton Mountain 151 79
Bell (Total Performance) ON Whitby
3141 648
Bell (Ultra) ON Toronto College / Dufferin 168
Bruce Municipal Telephone ON Bruce County
2576 666
Citenet QC Grenville-sur-la-Rouge
2439 534
Cogeco ON Hamilton
4546 602
Cogeco ON Hamilton East Hamilton 8968 488
Cogeco ON Kingston Downtown 9079 611
Cogeco (Lite) ON Cornwall
696 145
Delta Cablevision BC Delta
3434 213
Eastlink NS Halifax Clayton Park 14200 950
Eastlink NS New Glasgow
737 340
Execulink ON Brantford
601 659
FCI ON Greater Toronto North 4728 705
Inetlink MB “Rural”
592 34
MTS MB Winnipeg West end 4439 425
MTS MB Winnipeg
1083 413
Northern Telephone ON Timmins
104 77
Novus BC Vancouver
10380 600
Primus ON Ottawa Vanier 4229 511
Quadro ON Kirkton
2445 79
Rogers ON Brampton County Court / 10 6366 502
Rogers ON Mississauga Square One 5775 501
Rogers ON Mississauga
5269 447
Rogers ON Ottawa Barrhaven 3500 786
Rogers ON Ottawa Glebe 6122 806
Rogers ON Thornhill
6555 493
Rogers (Extreme) NB Petit-Rocher
4778 778
Rogers (Extreme) ON Cambridge
8080 808
Rogers (Extreme) ON Ottawa Sandy Hill 2698 497
Rogers (Lite) ON Brantford
284 67
Rogers (Lite) ON Waterloo
965 128
Rogers (Ultra Lite) ON Ottawa South 272 58
Rogers (Ultra Lite) ON Toronto Don Mills 268 68
SaskTel SK Martensville
540 460
SaskTel SK Swift Current
1453 322
SaskTel (Classic) SK Saskatoon
598 168
Shaw AB Calgary Dover 3487 277
Shaw AB Calgary Lynnwood 403 125
Shaw AB Calgary Southeast 167 183
Shaw AB Calgary Bridlewood 327 100
Shaw AB Calgary SW near downtown 190 167
Shaw AB Calgary
4597 291
Shaw AB Canmore
164 74
Shaw BC Abbotsford
4726 492
Shaw BC Coquitlam Harbour Chines 4836 489
Shaw BC Courtenay
1658 345
Shaw BC Gabriola Island
4914 466
Shaw BC Lower Mainland
4835
Shaw BC North Vancouver
4694 475
Shaw BC Penticton
3600 487
Shaw BC Vernon
8904 975
Shaw BC Vernon
2457 443
Shaw BC West Vancouver Cypress 4867 463
Shaw MB Portage La Prairie
1020 429
Shaw MB Winnipeg North end 1029 455
Shaw MB Winnipeg
3639 452
Shaw MB Winnipeg North end 1089 455
Shaw MB Winnipeg
1024 359
Shaw (Xtreme-I) MB Winnipeg Southwest 8095 982
Teksavvy ON Toronto Downtown 4206 669
Telebec QC Petite-Nation
1732 430
Telus AB Edmonton Ottewell 2546 486
Telus AB Edmonton
1323 540
Telus AB Lethbridge
2374 484
Telus AB St. Albert
553 437
Telus BC Vancouver
1320 543
VDN QC Montreal
692 128
Xplornet AB Ft. Vermilion
100 42

November 21, 2007
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Your first results

Thanks for running the speed tests and posting your results. Here's the first crop, from those of you who did the test Wednesday night. (These are just from people who included links to the fancy graphics. A chart showing everybody else's numbers is coming soon.)

Marpole, Vancouver:


Northern BC:


Fort St. James, BC:


Tuscany, Calgary:


Hamilton:


Windsor:


Orchard View, Ottawa:


Downtown, Toronto:


St. Lawrence/Old Town, Toronto:


Fairview Mall, Toronto:


Wabigoon, ON:


Montreal:


November 21, 2007
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Please, try this at home

We want to hear from you about your connections. So how about this: You take the test at Speedtest.net, using the recommended test server. Then post your results here, including your city, province, neighbourhood, and internet provider. We'll make a big chart of the results and update it as new ones come in.

Remember, this is mostly for fun. For all we know, every ISP in the country is about to open a super-quick connection to this site, just for the sake of appearances. Still.

November 21, 2007
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What the numbers mean

First, a bit. A bit is the smallest unit of digital information, either a one or a zero. So bits per second (bps) is a measure of how many ones or zeroes can move down a connection in a second.

A megabit is a million bits. So a connection that manages 5 Mbps can handle five million bits per second.

Next, a byte. A byte is a collection of eight bits, which is just enough information to hold a single letter or number. The documents you use on your computer are usually thousands or millions of bytes in size, so you tend to see them measured in kilobytes or megabytes.

A kilobyte (kB) is 1,024 bytes, and a megabyte (MB) is 1,048,576 bytes. To use some more meaningful references, a word processor document might be 200kB in size, and the standard pictures your digital camera takes are probably somewhere around 1MB each. Downloadable songs are usually between 3 and 4 MB each. A CD holds roughly 700MB.

So: a connection that manages 5Mbps can transmit about 625 kB per second, which means about six seconds to download a song.

November 21, 2007
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Links to more information

As you probably guessed already, the internet is full of talk about internet connections and how fast they are. Here are some links.

November 21, 2007
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Speed Bumps Credits

"Speed Bumps"

Producer
Kathleen Coughlin

Associate Producer
Stephanie Kampf

Field Associate Producer
Jennifer Leask

Research
Robert Ballantyne

Editor
Kathryn Dickson

Camera
Bill Arnold
Doug Kerr
Neith MacDonald
Ed Middleton
Mark Nieuwenhof
Mike Varga

Sound
Dave Fox
Karndeep Jassal
Bill Moore

November 21, 2007
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