[goggles99]

>While I was seeing my episode of The Good Wife falter at what appeared to be 1.9 Mbps, I was able to measure connection speeds of 28 Mbps to my house using a Speedtest.net test from Ookla. This is exactly the dichotomy that the M-Lab data is showing, and my example is not an isolated one; Comcast users have been complaining for months.

How do we know that it is not just the provider being sapped for bandwidth? I notice that speed tests I run in the mid-day and evening come back pretty much the same, but Netflix takes noticeably longer to buffer in the evening. I always assumed this was because their servers were much busier then.

[xur17]

I'm guessing it's that link to Netflix from your provider that is busier at that time. I use a local provider for internet service, that despite offering crappy customer service, has given me consistent speeds, and no buffering issues with Netflix or Youtube at all.