Click here to test your Internet speed, or just visit www.speedtest.net directly. It’s worldwide! — OK… more accurate if outside the mainland of China. They also developed an iPhone app in the App Store.
Majority people in China are surfing online throught the old technique —ADSL. The “A” stands for asymmetric, because the user has only 512Kbps (64KBps) bandwidth in the up direction, regardless of which rate plan they select ( 2Mbps, 4Mbps or more for downloading). Nowadays, China Telecom, one of the biggest ISPs in mainland China, begin offering free bandwidth upgrade (2Mbps to 4Mbps) to their existing customers, even free ADSL to Fiber Cable upgrade in certain rich cities, e.g. , Suzhou in Jiangsu Province. In other cities, the ISP double the price for doubling the bandwidth, with some bundled services like iTV(IPTV) and free minutes for calls between family members. Customs have no option even though some of them are aware of the trick the ISP is playing. Because, those options left are unacceptable— they charge the customs for the most basic wired internet service by data usage– like the 3G data plan in most countries.
In the future, DSL and FTTB+LAN will replace the situation that the translation of the data is carried over the thin phone line. But the way is still long away. Unlike in the US, the ISP does not worry the market share much —the internet service in Chia is monopolized. The China Telecom occupies the south of China while the China Netcom the north. There are also connections issue between those two ISPs that communication between them will suffer from incredible and unreasonable lag. If one lives in southern China, he won’t want to switch to Netcome even if they are cheaper, because the performance is worse in his area. He will have a terrible experience (even the most pricy plan is choosen with sufficient bandwidth) when gaming online with his friends and colleagues that all use Telecom as their ISP. The latency is inevitable.
The South Koreans are reported to have the fastest connection speed in the world… their ISPs just rock.
Some results (Server in Austin, TX).
from my working place — the lab at BCM <——————> from my apartment ( tested over WiFi)
It is not necessary to buffer when watching youtube videos in 1080p.
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Update #1
This number of test servers is continously growing. As of today, a local server in Houston TX is hosted by comcast.
The results (Server in Houston,TX)
from my working place — the lab at BCM <——————> from my apartment ( tested over WiFi)
