BB speedtest confusion

patgc

I have recently been upgraded to the 8mb speed on Madasafish. I took the opportunity to do a speed test from their site and it came up with
' 1.8Mb bandwidth speedtest result '.
This has confused me a bit as when I hover my mouse over the little connection icon at the bottom of my screen it says 5.8mbps. I know you can only get what your exchange can handle but why is there this difference.

scotty

The various speedtest sites are not very reliable, particularly for ADSLMax. I have run three different speedtests within seconds of one another (and one of these I repeated) and the results were scattered all over the place. The recent introduction of ADSLMax has also resulted in a large number of speedtests being performed and it has been suggested that some of the test sites are overloaded.

I have read that the most reliable method of measuring connection speed is to download a file from a site such as Microsoft windows update and to time the download.

Another consideration is the training period when a line is upgraded to ADSLMax. You may see speeds changing as BT try to establish the fastest stable speed your line can take.

normanmark

The adsl max top speed works out your average usage for the first 10 days. Then it sets that average top speed as the maxmium speed you'll ever get throughout

peter_the_piper

Whilst that was the plan, it did not always work out that way. during the 10 days I was getting between 2.5meg and 5.25meg but BT had to work on the line down the road and since then I have been getting between .75 and 2.5meg and they seem to have set mine now at 1.9meg. As of last week they had not even set a MSR.This was way below what I was expecting and I believe erroniously low. Not been worth the upgrade to me. line was originally estimated at between 5 and 8 meg.