The VZ tech who installed my FiOS had his own procedures for speed-testing and speed-tuning, according to him the sites that VZ runs for the purpose give terrible results so none of the service techs use them. (They’re still targeted at DSL, not FiOS speeds.)
He recommended Speakeasy.net’s speed test – Speakeasy has done a very nice job as usual, too bad I can’t get FiOS speeds (and prices) from them – and also http://miranda.ctd.anl.gov:7123/for more repeatable numbers. My Linux box showed near 15M downloads and 1.8M uploads right off the bat, not bad for a 15M/2M service.
The web site he used for tuning Windows downloaded an app that set a bunch of Registry settings. This worked fine (IBM Thinkpad T42, Windows XP) – and anyway if it blew up, my work IT guy would have to fix it! So I didn’t save this URL.
The Apple iBook was a little out of his league, however. He had a CD-R with a collection of tools, one of which was an ethernet driver update, which he thought would do the trick. Only problem is that my iBook already had a newer Ethernet driver! So I let him leave at this point, and did my own research. I’ll post the iBook settings later.