Bias alert: This study is done by the Communications Workers of America, of which I am a member (I think) by virtue of my membership in the Newspaper Guild. There is a political spin -- CWA notes correctly that the U.S. internet infrastructure lags behind that of other developed nations and wants to establish "a national policy to promote universal, high-speed Internet access." But the results, derived from hundreds of thousands of people testing their units on CWA's SpeedTest site, are interesting.

Maryland has the 8th fastest download time, with median download speed of almost 4 megabits per second and median upload speed of 10 mbps. Rhode Island is fastest, at 6.8 mbps download and 16.2 mbps upload. In Alaska, on the other hand, I don't think they're downloading too many pirated copies of Dark Knight on BitTorrent. Median download speed up there was 814 kilobits per second.

You can test your own computer. My Baltimore Sun machine downloaded at 9.4 megabits per second. Median download speed for the nation is 2.3 megabits. In Japan it's 63 mbps, in South Korea, 49 mbps and in France 17 mbps, says CWA.