A recent article in Slate by Benjamin Lennett and Sascha Meinrath at the New America Foundation decry the $350 million in taxpayer money the FCC spent trying to map broadband access speeds across the US. They say, as you will find out by searching your address in their database (http://broadbandmap.gov/), the internet providers and speeds listed are "maximum advertised speeds," and bear little resemblance to what what you're really getting at home. It seems that there was more input from the providers themselves than from the users (if any at all).
The New America Foundation has partnered with the PlanetLab Consortium and Google to create a site, along with a number of diagnostic tools, called "Measurement Lab" (http://www.measurementlab.net/).
Apparently, Measurement Lab's tests have been run more than 500 million times. Unfortunately, their tools don't work on every computer. I have yet to be able to run any of them on a Mac.
Give it a try, and let me know if it works for you!
