[apologies to all for thread-breaking, am really going on hiatus but the horror-show performance GBE topic was too darn interesting--last post I promise!]

I would call it a dedicated gigabit link. This is probably up for debate. The provider's overall capacity is very likely not [number of customers] x [1 Gb/s] but I've never witnessed signs of throttling or over-subscription.

Pulling a whois on the IP 184.100.166.110 and a quick Google turned up that you are probably a bleeding-edge subscriber to this new Quest service:

https://www.centurylink.com/fiber/

Running a filter on Blutmagie

hostname contains quest

shows that your relays are, by a huge margin, the fastest of about a dozen.

My advice is that this QWest service is third-rate and rather than bleeding for the length of the contract, run for the hills!

If you are still in the 1-month cancellation period (relays are about a month old), terminate the service immediately and place an order for Verizon FiOS.

FiOS costs more, but sells real bandwidth instead of imaginary bandwidth. You can run a relay on a 75/75 MBit link (like mine) and obtain respectable bandwidth ranking. FiOS goes up to 1/2 GB for about $300-400 per month but the bandwidth is real and the network is good-to-excellent.

Either that or switch to leasing a colo server in Germany or some other country where bandwidth is extremely cheap, or perhaps finding a cheap bandwidth colo in the US.

QWest GBE looks like a turkey.