Sadly, even during the pandemic, our officials have been slow to really do anything about it, including improving our broadband access in a meaningful way. Most recently the Washington State Department of Commerce is pretending to do so by offering a broadband speed test on their site. However, the site uses a Speedtest.net testing tool, whose traffic is pritiorized by big telecoms and always produces false positives in favor of the big telecoms. It also is not a proper network load test, meaning that the results are virtually worthless. On top of that, the state bases its access speed on the totally inadequate FCC standard of only 25 Mbits down and 3 up to appease DSL, wireless and satellite providers who provide overpriced, inadequate service. Of course, excellent, free, network load testing tools are available like Flent for Linux.
