Why is my Verizon LTE faster than my 100mbps fiber connection?

[JMFarnsworth]

I have been running into some strange issues as of late.

I have a 100/100 mbps fiber connection at home, and have not had any issues until yesterday. On this site, I was getting as much as 85mbps down, which is what I would expect for my connection type. All of a sudden, it has dropped between 5-6 mbps consistently.

I started doing some troubleshooting, and have the following observations/data:

1. My Verizon LTE hotspot is getting between 8-20 mbps. These tests are run in conjunction, or right before or after the fiber tests. With Verizon, I would expect 7-25 mbps. This tells me that there is likely nothing wrong with the website.

2. From both connections, I am running a tracert to www.testmy.net. Everything looks ok until the hand off from networklayer.com to theplanet.com. During this time, I get a "request timed out" error. I am wondering if this could possibly be impacting the speedtests with my fiber connection. I also did this through my Cogent fiber connection at work, and got the same issue.

3. From my fiber connection, I ran several tracert and ping tests to different website, and got quite a few timeouts

4. All of the succesful pings are between 20-80ms, so I don't suspect an issue there.

5. I have repeated all of the above tests from different computers, wired/wireless, and on my iPad/iPhone, and have had essentially the same results. I also completed the tests while connected directly to my gateway (bypassing the router).

6. My router was replaced last week (asus rt-n66u), so I doubt it is the issue. Also, messing with MTU sizes, firewall settings, UPnP, etc., didn't seem to help either.

I spoke to my current fiber ISP at home, and they told me that they will only guarantee their speeds within their network. Anything outside of this is out of their control. While this may be partially true, a 100mbps connection should not drop to 5-6 regardless of what network it is in.

Initially, I thought that all signs point to peering, but I am hesitant to put the blame there, as everything looked ok yesterday.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[mudmanc4]

Iv'e been watching this for the better part of two years. I believe they are bringing more sections of this complex online. I'm not saying this is your issue , but your exact issue is directly in line with mine , as well as so many more.

As ALL digital traffic is re directed to this complex , there are issues arising. This of course is all of course my opinion based on quite some time of paying attention.

I should add that the current datacenter is bloated and causing such a power drain on the current location , the first addition in 30 years to a nuclear facility is being built to handle the new datacenter.

Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”

http://www.wired.com...atacenter/all/1

The September launch of Kundra's Apps.gov online storefront -- which makes it easier for government agencies to acquire cloud-based services from private companies like Google and Salesforce.com -- drew most of the attention. But state CIOs in Utah and Michigan are betting that some public-sector customers would rather get cloud services from another government instead of a commercial provider.

Both states are gearing up to launch public-sector clouds operated by their central IT agencies that will serve state agencies, as well as local governments and schools. Some expect this type of government-operated cloud to become common as states look to leverage their investments in consolidation and sophisticated technology infrastructure. For customers, emerging government clouds add another option to a growing menu of hosted infrastructure and application offerings -- an option that doesn't include turning over government data and applications to a private vendor.

Source

This is only mid stage from what I understand, the project will never really end. Although I'm sure issues such as this , once recognized , or at the very least acknowledged by providers ect. , and the conversation moves to the realities of this project.

ISP's are being forced to upgrade / update there systems to handle the double load they are and will be required to handle.

The way I understand this , the data is split , at what point I'm not yet certain , either way , data is copied and recorded at some point in the network.

[JMFarnsworth]

Thanks for the insight mudmanc4. At least this validates that I am not alone.

I just wish the ISP's would admit when their peering relationships were having issues. The excuse that "we only guarantee 100mbps to our node" is a joke. What is the point of having a fast connection if I can only use it to connect to your network, and nothing else.

[TriRan]

Thanks for the insight mudmanc4. At least this validates that I am not alone.

I just wish the ISP's would admit when their peering relationships were having issues. The excuse that "we only guarantee 100mbps to our node" is a joke. What is the point of having a fast connection if I can only use it to connect to your network, and nothing else.

try testing from another location, there are now 3 servers to test from in the US... i to have noticed from time to time there are routing issues to the main server (dallas tx one) so i just test from the west or east coast and everything shows perfectly fine

[mudmanc4]

No I agree , but it's not as if they can do anything about it at this point. And again , this is simply my hypothesis nothing more.

[JMFarnsworth]

Thanks for the feedback so far. I tried testing from the different servers, but got similar results (4-6 down).

On another note, my parents have Comcast, and are in the same neighborhood as I am. They pay for the 24/4 package, and are getting consistent results from speedtest.net, and this website. I tested all three servers on testmy.net, and got 22-24mbps down. The same was true on multible servers from testmy.net. I could say a lot about comcast, but at least they are consistent.