Broadband Boosting discussion 2 March 2010 at 7:06PM edited 30 November -1 at 12:00AM in Broadband & Internet Access 26 replies 31.8K views

Former_MSE_Lawrence

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Broadband Boosting

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stevdl

The streetstats site isn't giving very accurate results at the moment...it reports less than half my actual download speed (tested on a number of other sites). Their servers are probably overloaded by readers of the weekly mse email. You might want to try again later if you see the same thing.

Not sure if I'm allowed to recommend other sites but I've found speedtest.net good in the past. It lets you to choose your download server so you can test the speed and delay to other parts of the world (invaluable to me because I do a lot of remote working with people in other countries). The link between you and your ISP is supposed to be the main bottleneck (and it usually is) but it's amazing how slow things can get when you are communicating with people or servers in other countries, especially some of the less developed ones.

web_ferret

I agree, something amiss with the streetstats site.
I tested the work connection this lunchtime and it recorded 2Mb - Its nearer 7Mb on other sites including the one mentioned above which I have used before.

JDPower

I don't know why StreetStats was included in this guide, it's been notoriously inaccurate since it launched and IIRC was rubbished on this very site (not working at all when I try entering my post code).

steliz

Does anyone know which settings I should check to find out if any video streaming programs are using my bandwidth.

JDPower

steliz wrote: »

Does anyone know which settings I should check to find out if any video streaming programs are using my bandwidth.

Surely you know if you've been watching streaming vids?

PM1

I periodically use mybroadbandspeed - co - uk to test my speed, run three tests in succession, and download the history as a csv, so I have built up a picture over time of my speeds. It comes in at the same speed as the streetstats site.

I would like to be able to test from home to my ISP, as well as from home through the ISP to a remote test, to investigate all the paths.

kwikbreaks

> I would like to be able to test from home to my ISP

Some ISPs have in-house speed tests so check the website of yours. Tiscali used to have one which was notoriously inaccurate - anybody with more than the 100kbps routinely available to Tiscali customers at peak times would see massive speeds reported which exceeded their sync

As I recall MSE used to recommend Tiscali - this just goes to show that treating broadband as a commodity like electricity and recommending the cheapest offering is a very big mistake. The best advice I can offer for ensuring people get the best from their line itself and pick the best ISP for their needs is to do their research on a site dedicated to broadband matters (eg ThinkBroadBand) and not one dedicated to money saving with a few tech boards added.

brewerdave

I enter my postcode on streetstats - good news - the result is as accurate as any other site for speed .... but bad news ... it obviously thinks I'm connected to another nearby exchange as its offering me faster connections with LLU /ADSL2 + suppliers (there are none on my exchange which only supplies ~ 1350 premises so is very unlikely to ever have any!)

Giggerata

hello, I am paying for a speed of 10 Mbps and on speedtest.net I get 4.9 Mbspwhile on thinkbroadband.com I get a speed of 1.7 Mbps. When I spoke with Virgin the other day, they recorded a speed of 6.5 on speedtest and said that is the one they use and they are not interested in what I have to say about thinkbroadband. I don't understand why I should get such a different result time after time. Any thoughts would be welcome.

lucylucky

Giggerata wrote: »

hello, I am paying for a speed of 10 Mbps You are paying for a speed up to 10 Mbps and on speedtest.net I get 4.9 Mbspwhile on thinkbroadband.com I get a speed of 1.7 Mbps. When I spoke with Virgin the other day, they recorded a speed of 6.5 on speedtest and said that is the one they use and they are not interested in what I have to say about thinkbroadband. I don't understand why I should get such a different result time after time. Any thoughts would be welcome.

It is always worth doing a number of tests with the same site over a period of time and at different times of the day. Then you may well have some ammunition to confront them with