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Well I've been messing about with Windows 7 TCP settings, Winsock and all sorts. Trying to get the best settings etc but in the end I just reset everything to Windows default.
As I have mentioned I know I get full speed Downloads as I have opened 14 different download files and counted the total MB/s achieved
I decided that I was going to try all the UK speedtest.net sites one after the other and have now done so.
The results are truly astounding. Whether all sites are capable of testing 100Mbit connections I dont know but my download speeds rantged from 2Mbit up to 103.3Mbit.
I have found that the Lancaster server is the best to test with (in my case), followed by Kingston Upon Hull. I'm located down the south of the UK but these servers are impressive!.
The Lancaster speedtest gives me consitantly over 100Mbit (104.44Mbit actual) download with 8.59Mbit upload (I get over 9.2Mbit upload on some of the other locations).
So, if your speedtest results arent that great and your SuperHub power levels etc look fine then at least try the other server test locations.
I just speedtested all the speedtest.net servers in the UK, Ireland, France, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg. While Namesco still gives me a decent download speed on non-VM connections, Lancaster is actually coming out best overall.
Basically, I havent actually changed anything on my pc to get a good result.
I used to use London test server all the time when on 20mbit and that showed full speed. Then on 50mbit it was fine (showed 50Mbit) until I'm sure speedtest.net changed its site design (may be just me though) and I could only achieve 30Mbit results. It also depended on ping. If ping was over 25ms I got a good score and if under that it would suck! Strangely.
Lancaster I think was the 2nd furthest speedtest.net UK server from me yet gives great results (nice routing maybe?).
This just goes to show the potential for many customers to complain about their VM broadband speeds when it could be perfectly fine. Of course some connections do have issues. What is needed is a 100% reliable speedtest site / server and not some random speed one which can only confuse the poor guy testing his speed.
The only really reliable test is to use multiple downloads to max the advertised connection speeds and see what you actually obtain.
Services: RG41: 1Gig VOLT
Rutland: Gigaclear 400/400
Posts: 12,928
Re: Q regarding channel ID, power and speeds
CPCUK has confirmed what I've said in a few places about speedtest.net reliability.
Of late, I've found the London hosts to be unreliable when compared in the same systematic way as CPCUK has described.
I must admit I hadn't alighted on Lancaster, but Hull was always (and still is for me) pants. Until now, my benchmark has been Paris, they've added Massy (also OK) and Lancaster, because of the low ping time, I now trust.
So it can't be Flash. Flash isn't CPU intensive judging by the CPU graphs on my dual-core.
So I agree with CPCUK's conclusion that actual downloads are the acid test. But you have to find a site that can dispense at the full speed.
When I am able to get full speed which is 30mbit on my quad core i5 it can use about 20% cpu power.
Assuming its 3.3x that requirement to do the 100mbit test then it needs quite a bit of juice. Given that I expect most people in the uk now browse on portable type devices as well like laptops and ipads.
My best ever results currently are from Lancaster (as per my sig), and all the Paris ones - in fact all the France ones came out better than most of the UK ones.
Paris gave me 115-138 down and 75-127 up, which in itself is quite variable but I only did two tests. Massy was actually better - 210 down, 226 up. There seem to be two "classes" of speedtest servers - dunno if it's related to them using different IP settings (e.g. large windows), but they either give me ~20-40mbps upload results or 150+ with nothing in-between.
In fact, on some platforms (Win7x64) running the same test to the same server in IE could give me 200mbps upload but in Firefox only 40mbps, yet the same downstream result. Odd!
In case anyone's interested I decided to speedtest all* of speedtest.net's servers.
Spoiler:
*By "all" I don't actually mean all. I'm adopting VM's fairly loose interpretation of "all", "everyone" and "unlimited". I actually just did the UK, Ireland, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark and Luxembourg.
The results are below. They should really be taken as an sorted list, rather than absolute quality ratings.
I only did one test on most of them, under one condition at one time. Conditions may not reflect any particular situation on the VM network It gives us an idea of the relative speed capabilities of each server. The "Yes/No" columns are based solely on my opinion of their suitability for testing each tier.
Code:
Group 1 - Superfast uploads - Great if you have a symmetric line, fibre, etc.
Apart from a few with consistency issues, they're all good for 100mb+
Server Country Download Upload Ping 20/30mb 50/60mb 100/120mb
Lancaster UK 520.7 278.9 5 Yes Yes Yes
Luxembourg LU 304.8 226.9 18 Yes Yes
Massy FR 297.2 225.4 21 Yes Yes Yes
Manchester UK 246.2 158.8 11 Yes Yes Yes
Contern LU 235.4 211.0 19 Yes Yes Yes
Naaldwijk NL 220.6 161.0 25 Yes Yes Yes
Malmo DK 207.8 149.1 34 Yes Yes Yes
Merzig LU 196.8 157.2 31 Yes Yes Yes
Steinsel LU 196.7 228.2 19 Yes Yes Yes
Mechelen BE 192.9 182.6 27 Yes Yes Yes
Alkmaar NL 184.9 160.5 26 Yes Yes Yes
Clichy FR 183.4 190.1 19 Yes Yes Yes
Eindhoven NL 167.7 170.8 28 Yes Yes Yes
Bonneville FR 163.5 160.2 30 Yes Yes Yes
Aubervilliers FR 158.9 211.6 21 Yes Yes Yes
Paris FR 115.3 127.5 22 Yes Yes
Lyon FR 106.3 175.5 30 Yes Yes
Dronten NL 89.5 194.5 19 Yes
Copenhagen DK 66.5 154.9 36 Yes
Group 2 - Standard uploads. Fine for cable.
I'd be careful if you have 10mbps+ UL Infinity or other FTTx
Server Country Download Upload Ping 20/30mb 50/60mb 100/120mb
Cappelle Ij NL 364.5 36.4 21 Yes Yes Yes
Maidstone UK 277.8 57.6 11 Yes Yes Yes
Kingston UH UK 262.0 36.9 20 Yes Yes Yes
Rotterdam Qweb NL 248.5 51.5 20 Yes Yes Yes
Capelle NL 243.2 51.5 31 Yes Yes Yes
Roubaix FR 205.7 46.2 15 Yes Yes
Randers DK 188.3 54.3 39 Yes Yes Yes
Bournemouth UK 167.4 26.2 13 Yes Yes Yes
Veendam NL 167.2 16.6 22 Yes Yes
London UK 138.0 36.7 11 Yes Yes Yes
Dublin Eircom IE 137.7 16.6 30 Yes Yes
Ashford UK 128.3 42.3 12 Yes Yes
Sittingbourne UK 123.0 51.2 12 Yes Yes
Dublin Vodafone IE 98.5 16.5 26 Yes Yes
Amsterdam NL 96.5 30.9 23 Yes Yes
Liverpool UK 94.9 27.4 25 Yes Yes
Gloucester UK 94.9 27.1 25 Yes Yes
Dublin Digiweb IE 94.8 26.2 25 Yes Yes
Newbury UK 94.4 20.0 19 Yes Yes
Norwich UK 87.1 26.7 21 Yes Yes
Limerick IE 83.5 22.1 26 Yes Yes
Galway IE 81.4 30.2 23 Yes
Leeds UK 80.7 14.5 21 Yes
Skipton UK 64.9 20.2 25 Yes
Birmingham UK 64.4 30.0 21 Yes
Coventry UK 63.9 72.7 11 Yes
Rotterdam Luna NL 63.0 32.7 25 Yes
Guernsey UK 58.7 18.2 25 Yes
Brussels BE 57.3 61.8 22 Yes
Utrecht NL 55.2 25.2 36 Yes
Aberdeen UK 54.6 11.8 33 Yes
Group 3 - Epic fail servers. Crap at just about everything.
Probably best avoided for anything until they'e fixed.
Server Country Download Upload Ping 20/30mb 50/60mb 100/120mb
Canterbury UK 46.3 12.9 14 FAIL FAIL FAIL
Dundalk IE 36.5 8.5 25 FAIL FAIL FAIL
Arnhem NL 33.0 57.7 25 FAIL FAIL FAIL
Derry NI 28.8 23.6 25 FAIL FAIL FAIL
Some day I might get round to doing automated tests (e.g. 10+ per server) and working out some standard deviations to estimate stability. But not till I get my own connection stable.
---------- Post added at 21:25 ---------- Previous post was at 20:19 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chrysalis
When I am able to get full speed which is 30mbit on my quad core i5 it can use about 20% cpu power.
Curious. I hit about 40% on my dual-core i7 (laptop) but only at 300mbps+. Given that an older 3Ghz Core 2 Duo has no issues exceeding 500mbps+ on Speedtest.net, I wouldn't say CPU is an issue.
Services: RG41: 1Gig VOLT
Rutland: Gigaclear 400/400
Posts: 12,928
Re: Q regarding channel ID, power and speeds
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chrysalis
When I am able to get full speed which is 30mbit on my quad core i5 it can use about 20% cpu power.
Assuming its 3.3x that requirement to do the 100mbit test then it needs quite a bit of juice. Given that I expect most people in the uk now browse on portable type devices as well like laptops and ipads.
I don't see why 100 meg should use 3x CPU of 30 meg.
Anyway, I was addressing the point made that Flash uses a lot of CPU power. I didn't think so on current machines.
30mbit ftp 0.9 %cpu usage
http 1.4% cpu usage
flash 19.6% cpu usage O_o
pingtest.net cpu usage 4.6% O-o for pings
incidently on my sisters laptop when I tested speedtest here a while back it couldnt max out the speed as the cpu pegged to 100% during the test. On my laptop it hits 60% or so.
Services: RG41: 1Gig VOLT
Rutland: Gigaclear 400/400
Posts: 12,928
Re: Q regarding channel ID, power and speeds
Simples. 19.6% (or indeed 40%) is not a lot of CPU power. In any case, peops doing speed tests are hardly likely to be doing anything else on their PC for fear of affecting the test.
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