Got your Road Runner speed upgrade to 10mb yet?

Always nice to get a speed boost. My friends at Oceanic gave me the “inside scoop” that their network upgrade is almost complete. A quick check to speedtest.net confirmed that my Hawaii Road Runner Broadband connection is cranking at 10mb down and 1mb up.

Speedtest.net download speed

My download speed as measured by speedtest.net

We usually take these kinds of things for granted but allow me to contrast this to the not-so-distant past. I recall in 1993, just before the commercial Internet was just taking hold in Hawaii, UH had one of the few Internet connections. I recall being told that the entire UH campus, including all the community colleges share a single T-1 connection. A T-1 is 1.5mb/sec.

So in less than 2 decades, we’ve gone from 1.5mb to serve an entire University and its colleges to 6x the speed going to a single home.

Now, lets talk price. I recall in 2000 when my company CyberCom purchased a T-1 line for its business, the price was about $800/mo. Today, only 5 years later, I get 6x the download speed and about 2/3 the upload speed for 1/20th the cost.

The only word I have for that is: Amazing!

2 replies
  1. Moa Kane says:

    Peter:
    OK so I am not to smart regards Tech things. Lets get that upfront. However I ran a Speed Test on Speedtest.net and did not get close to what you showed. I got Download: 1.90 Upload: .093 and Ping: 134ms. I guess the numbers on the Upload and Ping are OK but what about Download 1.90. Do I have to purchase Oceanic’s Turbo service?

  2. Peter Kay says:

    Hmm…the numbers I had were with the non-turbo modem. It’s possible you may have not have received the upgrade. Try turning your cable modem off and then back on. Also using speedtest I did my test with San Francisco. Speeds may vary based on where you try.

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