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Comcast increases Xfinity internet speeds across the northeast
If you're an Xfinity internet customer in the northeast, it might be worth running a speed test. Comcast just announced that it's bumping download speeds for internet users in a total of 14 northeastern states, from Maine down through Virginia. Each of the four internet tiers Xfinity offers will increase, though by how much will vary. The two higher-speed "Blast" and "Performance Pro" options increase from 200 and 150 Mbps to 250 and 200 Mbps, respectively. The basic "Performance" tier, meanwhile, jumps from 25 to 60 Mbps, and the modest "Starter" tier moves from 10 to 15 Mbps.
New National School Speed Test hopes to help all K-12 students get effective digital learning
With 99 percent of the nation's K-12 schools hooked-up to the internet, you'd think online learning was an educational staple. Sadly, it's also estimated that some 80 percent of those connections can't provide the 100Mbps per 1,000 students bandwidth the State Education Technology Directors Association recommends. That's why NPO EducationSuperHigway has announced the National School Speed Test initiative, with the goal to take actual stock of the state of internet connections in our schools. The NSST hopes to measure the internet capabilities of every K-12 school, and identify those that are lagging behind. Educational staff and students can also help out by checking their own school's speeds on a dedicated website (linked below). The results of the NSST will be open to the institutions themselves, districts and state departments of education, enabling them to better plan upgrade strategies for the future.
Internet speeds drop around the world according to Akamai, adoption rate up
Here's an odd one: average connection speeds around the globe dropped 14 percent to just 2.3 Mbps during the last quarter of 2011. The drop off remains something of a mystery since the data used to calculate that result doesn't include mobile broadband (so its increased adoption can't be dragging down the whole) and Akamai offers no explanation. Still, it's not time to start panicking, just yet. Even though speeds in the US dropped 5.3 percent from the previous quarter, average connection rates are still up significantly over the previous year. Otherwise, things largely stayed the same. Global broadband adoption was steady at 66 percent and the US continued to trail its friends across the Pacific (by a lot) in the race for the fastest Internet connections. Interestingly, while the number of broadband connections stayed consistent the number of narrowband lines (under 256 Kbps) declined dramatically. Yet, the percentage of the world's population connected to the web managed to increase 2.1 percent quarter over quarter -- and 13 percent for the year. So, while it may seem that the internet had a temporary set back in Q4 of 2011, the long term trends look good. The number of people online is increasing, the average speeds being pulled down by those people is climbing and the number of folks stuck in the dial up era is dropping. To get a copy of the full report hit up the source.
Microsoft's 'HTTP Speed + Mobility' aims to make the web faster, could be the next big ping
We're generally satisfied with our internet performance, but we wouldn't say no to a speed boost. A Microsoft blog post reveals plans to enable just that, with the company's proposed "HTTP Speed + Mobility" approach to HTTP 2.0. Have you thought about what life would be like with a faster internet? MS says Y-E-S! "There is already broad consensus about the need to make web browsing much faster," the company proclaimed. Juicy. The suggested protocol will, well, focus on achieving greater speed, but Microsoft hasn't detailed exactly how it will accomplish that, beyond mentioning that it's based on the Google SPDY protocol, which on its own aims to reduce latency and congestion by prioritizing requests and removing the limit on simultaneous streams over a single TCP connection. For its part, MS says it will be expanding on SPDY to "address the needs of mobile devices and applications," which we presume would be in Google's best interests as well. It's safe to say that Microsoft's being a bit more forthcoming during its meetings with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) this week -- the organization responsible for creating HTTP 2.0 -- so perhaps we'll be hearing more about this fabled faster internet before we turn anew to Q2.
FCC measures US wireline advertised broadband speeds, fiber dominates cable and DSL
Ever wonder if the speeds your ISP advertises are actually what you're getting while reloading Engadget all day? The FCC did, and decided to team up with 13 major broadband providers in the US to test how they performed from February to June of this year. Notably, during peak hours the average continuous download speeds of fiber connections were 14 percent faster than advertised, while cable and DSL were slower than claimed by 8 and 18 percent, respectively. Upload speeds also varied, with DSL again dipping the lowest at 95-percent of what's advertised -- might be time to ask your phone-based ISP for a partial refund, no? In addition to sustained speeds, the FCC analyzed consumer connections' latency and the effect of ISP speed boost tech on activities like VoIP, gaming, and video streaming. In concluding its research, the Commission noted that it should be easy to get tools in users' hands for keeping better tabs on ISP-provided services, without needing to contact customer frustrations relations. The study is chock full of even more graphs and stats, which you'll find by hitting that source link below. Now, if only we could get those speeds on par with our friends across the Atlantic.
Akamai sees internet speeds climb, Asia still dominates broadband arms race
Akamai's annual State of the Internet report is loaded with all sorts of interesting, if not terribly surprising, tidbits about both broad and narrowband connections around the globe. The big news? The world-wide average connection speed has jumped 23-percent from last year, to 2.1Mbps. Speeds in the good ol' US-of-A were up 15-percent for an average of 5.3Mbps, though we still languish in 14th place on the list of fastest countries. As expected, Asia continues to dominate the speed race, with 61 cities in Japan alone making the top 100 list. If you want the fastest connections the States have to offer you'll have to head for San Jose or Riverside in CA or the home of the Wu (that's Staten Island for those of you not in the know), which all tied with an average 7.8Mbps connection. Check out the PR after the break and click the more coverage link to download some charts.
Envisioning an internet that's 100 times faster: we'll take two
Computer Science researchers at MIT have demonstrated a new way of organizing optical networks which could (in most cases) eliminate the need for conversion of the optical signals into electrical ones -- the way that the internet currently functions. Eliminating this extremely inefficient conversion could lead to an internet that is 100 times faster. The new approach, which lead researcher Vincent Chan calls "flow switching," establishes a dedicated path across the network from one point to the other, always in the same direction, eliminating the need for the router to store any data in memory while another conversion completes, and speeding up the whole process considerably. So what's holding us back from getting this super speedy internet in our clutches? Chan says there's no proven demand for internet that's that fast, so there's no real money behind the project. Considering that we'd pay almost any amount of money for such a thing, we find it hard to believe, but come on world: let's do this.
