How Slow Is Your Internet? Internet Slowdown Fights For Net Neutrality

Is your Internet slow today? The Internet Slowdown means you may be seeing more "spinning beach balls of death" and "infinite loads" than usual. Mozilla, Wordpress, Reddit and Netflix have joined forces to show what an Internet with no net neutrality would be like. The "Battle for Net Neutrality" is being fought between Team Cable (Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and At&T) and Team Internet. After annoying visitors with a glimpse of what a two-lane net may look like, sites participating in Team Internet redirect visitors to take action: Kickstarter and Vimeo help you call your senator; Digg asks you to sign a petition, and Demand Progress is directing people to write the FCC.

Calls may be pouring in today, but according to the Sunlight Foundation, Team Cable has "out-lobbied" Team Internet 5 to 1. To see if your elected official has weighed in on the matter, you can browse Battle For the Net's Political Scoreboard.

But the Internet Slowdown is an awareness campaign and Netflix isn't actually slowing your stream down, so why is your Internet so slow?

The United States has the most Internet users by far, but our average connection speed is hovering just above 10Mbps. Hong Kong, Japan and Switzerland all have much faster connections than the U.S., but South Korea has the the fastest connection in the world. In South Korea, 77 percent of connections are faster than the U.S.'s 10.5Mbps average. The lag in performance can be accredited to the massive telecommunications companies of Team Cable are subject to little-to-no competition. Our slow but expensive Interenet is "due [in part] to our aging copper infrastructure [and] the competition- and investment-stifling security offered to ISPs by regional monopolies" Motherboard's Derek Mead explained.

Curious to see how slow your internet is on Internet Slowdown Day? Use this widget from Ookla to check your internet speed: