50M : Different speed tests Giving different results?

[narco220]

I have the 50mb package with virgin but unsure what speed i'm getting..

If I do a speed test with thinkbroadband.com I get just under 10mb but if I use speedtest.net I get just under 50mb and if i use speedtest.bbmax.co.uk I get just under 30Mb,

I did a speed test on all 3 sites at least 3 times using firefox browser.

So which speed test is a true reflection of my speed? so I know if to contact VM about a fault or not

[thenry]

http://speedtester.bt.com/

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/...st/td-p/803499

http://proof.ovh.net/

[qasdfdsaq]

That's pretty much the nature of the internet these days, and speedtest sites.

Different servers perform differently, different paths to the same server perform differently. Some speedtest.net servers tend to be pretty good, others are pretty poor. Speed is also subjective, and depends on what you're doing.

Whether you have a fault depends on one thing only - what are you trying to do and is it working.

[New to cable]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

That's pretty much the nature of the internet these days, and speedtest sites.

Different servers perform differently, different paths to the same server perform differently. Some speedtest.net servers tend to be pretty good, others are pretty poor. Speed is also subjective, and depends on what you're doing.

Whether you have a fault depends on one thing only - what are you trying to do and is it working.

You are really going to explain how exactly internet speed for people on the same tier is SUBJECTIVE. Becuase in my mind if a 50Mb connection is showing as 30Mb you're not getting your quoted speeds...

Infact I can't go on....INTERNET DOWNLOAD SPEED WILL NEVER BE "SUBJECTIVE" THATS JUST RIDICULOUS LMAO.

---------- Post added at 23:22 ---------- Previous post was at 23:20 ----------

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

That's pretty much the nature of the internet these days, and speedtest sites.

Different servers perform differently, different paths to the same server perform differently. Some speedtest.net servers tend to be pretty good, others are pretty poor. Speed is also subjective, and depends on what you're doing.

Whether you have a fault depends on one thing only - what are you trying to do and is it working.

You are really going to explain how exactly internet speed for people on the same tier is SUBJECTIVE. Because in my mind if a 50Mb connection is showing as 30Mb you're not getting your quoted speeds...

Infact I can't go on....INTERNET DOWNLOAD SPEED WILL NEVER BE "SUBJECTIVE" THATS JUST RIDICULOUS LMAO.

Of course if you're saying 1 person thinks 10Mb is fast and another thinks 50Mb is fast then you're completely missing the point. If 100Mb is fast then its fast...that is not subjective lolol, omg this is hilarious...Its going on pastebin and a few other site slol.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by New to cable

You are really going to explain how exactly internet speed for people on the same tier is SUBJECTIVE. Becuase in my mind if a 50Mb connection is showing as 30Mb you're not getting your quoted speeds...

His 50mb connection is showing as 50mb. He IS getting the quoted download speeds. All else is subjective.

[Sephiroth]

Qasi has it exactly right.

Speed tests can vary from minute to minute. That's the internet.

If one speed test says 50 meg (and speedtest.net is used by a heck of a lot of people), then at that time you were getting 50 meg.

If you persist with speedtest.net, it might vary but it won't lie to you. It could show a slow speed if the host is oversubscribed - which is then the subjective truth. Maidenhead on speedtest.net is one of those. I use Paris for my speedtest.net.

The truest speed test is an actual download - and even then the site you're downloading from might not be able to punt out at your top speed.

It's a trick subject. Qasi is right.

[New to cable]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Qasi has it exactly right.

Speed tests can vary from minute to minute. That's the internet.

If one speed test says 50 meg (and speedtest.net is used by a heck of a lot of people), then at that time you were getting 50 meg.

If you persist with speedtest.net, it might vary but it won't lie to you. It could show a slow speed if the host is oversubscribed - which is then the subjective truth. Maidenhead on speedtest.net is one of those. I use Paris for my speedtest.net.

The truest speed test is an actual download - and even then the site you're downloading from might not be able to punt out at your top speed.

It's a trick subject. Qasi is right.

He is wrong when he says internet speeds are subjective. The speed of your internet connection is FACT! It may be incorrectly reported by various speed test sites but it is NEVER SUBJECTIVE.

If you have 50Mb coming into your home then its 50Mb, if you have 43Mb coming into your home then its 43Mb. ITS FACT. Never subjective.

If you internet is slowed due to over subscription that is a FACT. I think you both need to look up what subjective means. At best it would relate to this topic as, You think 10Mb is fast and I think 50Mb is fast, that is subjective.

But the varying speed of the internet connection entering a users home is not subjective, your internet being slowing due to over subscription is not subjective. These things are FACT.

[Sephiroth]

His full sentence says "Speed is also subjective, and depends what you're doing". It also depends what the internet is doing.

You're just arguing words and ignoring meaning. If you want to do that, one of the OED definitions for "Subjective" is:

Existing in the mind only, without anything real to correspond to it; illusory, fanciful

And while we're being grammatical, the OED also says that with 'the' it means a subjective fact or thing. But that's not how Qasi expressed his words.

So now try to answer the OP's question: Which speed test is a true reflection of his speed?

[kwikbreaks]

Going back to the original post...

When I was on 50Mbps before VM borked my connection by oversubscription...

I found that the Speedtest.net London and Birmingham servers would consistently show 50Mbps. That was true even with some short term drops in that speed as shown by an external monitoring program. That's because ST reports peak speeds rather than the average. Most of the time on my connection back in the days when it worked usually ran close to peak throughout the test anyway.

ThinkBroadBand never came close to 50Mbps. It reports average speeds but even the peaks were showing less than ST. This was absolutely consistent. Some (even on VM) get good results from TBB so this must in some way be down to routing but it was always the same for me.

IMO the BBMax speedtest uses far too little data to be reliable on high speed connections. My guess is that they keep the testfile size low because their server and connection aren't fast enough to handle higher volumes. I reckon low speed tests from them reflect more on their tester than your own connection. This could have changed as it's been a long time since I used their test.

Additionally many AV products impact the results reported by speedtesters. You really should be using other software as a crosscheck on what their tests report. Something like netmeter is good enough although that too will see the data after the AV so may be affected by AV buffering and scanning. I use the built in monitoring in the Tomato firmware on my router - that isn't immune to AV either though as it will only deliver what the PC can take. If you suspect your AV then turn it off for the duration of the testing.

[qasdfdsaq]

I should add, speedtests were originally intended to test the speed of your local connection to your ISP, e.g. your cable or DSL line, back when that was almost inevitably the limiting factor in your path to "the internet". Nowadays that is no longer the case, with end user connections exceeding some speedtest servers' as well as significant amounts of congestion in between.

That means the relevance of speedtest as a whole is decreasing, though Speedtest.net keeps itself relevant by offering lots of different servers to test multiple paths do different places on the internet - which is becoming more important now than simply the speed of the modem in your home.

Another point, as has been mentioned many times before, is that speedtests only measure one thing reliably - how fast your connection is at running that particular speed test. It's not neccessarily an accurate predictor of trying to do anything else on your connection of actual relevance. So as long as at least one speedtest is indicating 50mb, that means your equipment is functioning correctly and all else is up to the gods.

Finally in my opinion speedtests can be useful in helping the diagnosis of a fault, but a poor speedtest result in itself is not indicative of a fault.

[Sephiroth]

Qasi - you'll get New to cable going again with that!

Speed tests evolve with broadband evolution. So, technically, they do the job at the time when you invoke them (a point you acknowledge).

Speedtest.net seems to be definitive for most people - but it's not trusted at the moment. My own experience confirms this (to me at least). I can't trust the London hosts; I think they're under serious pressure. So I use PARIS.

I check the various speed tests against the nice and simple CableForum speed test. Making due allowance for the minute to minute variability, I've concluded that speedtest.net in the UK hosts is unreliable.

As to the relevance of speed tests - I can't agree with your view that this is in decline. People need a quick measure of whether their line is performing according to what the adverts claim. It isn't easy to find a download site that works at full speed and which doesn't trigger the P2P filter. I hope the VM speed test site that enables the users to test inside the VM network emerges from trial soon.

[narco220]

Ok forget the speed tests,

I was downloading something off a newsgroup(using a paid usenet Service) this morning at around 10:30am and my speed was up and down, Averaged from 2247kb/s upto 3037kb/s but seemed to settle in the lower for longer periods Never really going above 3000Kb/s for more than a few secounds before dropping again

I would have thought i'd be getting at least between 3800kb/s - 4800kb/s with a alot more consistency on a 50mb connection at this time in the morning: