[pumplekin]

This is due to advertising standards. They are required to advertise "average speed", although how this is actually calculated is nebulous.

A&A not advertising can just say what the link speeds actually are on the product pages.

Other ISP's could do this too, but it would cause confusion having one figure on the advert and one figure on the product pages, and they might get in trouble if they link to the product pages in the adverts.

[VorpalWay]

Couldn't they just list link speed and average speed (however that is measured, before or after protocol overhead for example) as two separate lines on the product page?

[db48x]

It’s still nonsense. Everyone doing FTTH is using passive optical networking (PON, or NGPON or XGPON or XGSPON or …) which actually has a line rate of 10Gbps. It then uses TDMA to give each subscriber enough time slots to send and receive at a particular speed. My ISP, Ziply Fiber, just gives every subscriber enough time slots to send at the advertised speed _after_ protocol overhead, even at gigabit and higher speeds. If you buy the 500 Mbps service it really will speed test at 500 Mbps. If you buy gigabit it really will test at 1000Mbps provided you have faster than gigabit Ethernet between you and the router. The router that they rent connects to the ONT at 10Gbps, so speed tests done on the router itself always test at the speed you’re subscribed to.

At 10Gbps and above they start using direct–attached fiber (DIA) instead, so the speed you subscribe to is the line rate and it will test lower due to protocol overhead. But if you can max out a 50Gbps link then I think the overhead will not bother you much.

They also allow residential customers to run BGP and use their own addresses. They’re a great ISP.