10 CommentsOne of the draws of coming back to school is the Super Fast Internet Connection. At Columbia, we boast a roughly 10 megabits per second internet connection for both uploading and downloading.
Sound like gibberish? For reference, consider that a typical MP3 (music file) is about 48 megabits in size, so it would take about 5 seconds to download.
We were curious how our speeds compare to other top schools, so we pestered our million friends across the country.
Just this once, we bow to our friends in New Haven…
…and extend our sympathies to our continually slow compatriots in Providence. Click on the graph for a larger version. A few technical caveats after the jump.
Speeds were measured using speedtest.net on an Ethernet (wired, not wireless) connection. Speeds do vary with time of day and network traffic, but it is difficult to correct for that. In addition, the distance between the tester and the SpeedTest server varies with each location, which can affect the outcome.
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10 Comments
@actually http://www.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/acis/networks/quota/netquota.pl
In the long run this is what really limits your speed…
@... http://www.columbia.edu/acis/networks/bandwidth.html
it’s not that hard to find these things out… looks like there’s 10gbit pipe + a 1gbit pipe. (probably for redudancy)
of course i’m sure they do some sort of traffic shaping.
and there’s nysernet, which is “internet2” which probably sees little traffic because it has little to do with pornography, facebook or illicit acquisition of copyrighted media.
@i'm not smart enough to know this, but is there a tangible difference to 93mbps internet from say 50? Doesn’t it mostly depend upon the server you’re downloading from?
How much better is it to have Yale’s internet?
@actually Yale’s internet means that they can use video AND audio in their distance-learning classes and their program won’t freeze/crash.
@ron Also, make sure their ethernet jacks are not limited to 10Mbps!!
@Ron This is really interesting, but I would encourage you to try and get your friends to re-run the tests at various times/dates. Perhaps make a google spreadsheet for input of this data and we can take the peak throughputs people put in…
@Anish My bad. It was correct on the graph, though!
@we get 10 Mbps = megaBIT per second
@hmmm yes, bow to yale, but to get that fast of a connection you’d have to be in new haven, rendering your computer completely useless due to it being covered in vomit and tears.
@uhhh megabyte bwog… not megabit.
this is also a retarded test. fluctuations are too hard to test for? they’re HUGE during peak usage times.
poor job.