Broadband Speed?

joe2cool

Hi there seems to be so many 'Broadband speed' tests, which ones are the most accurate ? or are they very much the same?

Thx

Kalahary

I usually use http://www.thinkbroadband.com/

On some others I've got speeds almost double what I actually pay for so I don't really trust them.

Or you could use DD-WRT or similar to look at the bandwidth graphs.

arrallas

My ISP told me that the only test they rely on is the BT one at http://www.speedtester.bt.com/

UncleZen

Agreed, the BT speed tester will log the results behind the scenes, so that your ISP can see them, to assist with diagnosing speed issues.
Thinkbroadband will also save your results against your profile (account required) but my ISP (Plus net) require the BT speed tester because it gives them access to results that you as a user cannot "fiddle".

bod1467

The BT tester is really only relevant if you have a BT (or reseller) connection. If you are on cable (Virgin) or LLU (e.g. BE/O2, TalkTalk, Sky) then the ISP won't see the data anyway. Testers I sometimes use (as well as the TBB one) ...

https://www.speedtest.net
https://www.speed.io

... but any tester should be taken with a pinch of salt. What really matters is real-world performance. If you really want to see what you connection is like, try downloading something like an Ubuntu ISO.

GunJack

^^ good advice from bod in the above post. He lists the three speedtesters I use. You really need to get used to how your line behaves on each one regardless of the actual numbers, then you're more likely to pick up problems

John_Gray

If you have an Internet Security package, it seems that on occasion its firewall will "buffer" the data transfer, which can lead to amusing results for those speed testers which pay more attention to the Maximum data transfer rate rather than the Average/Mean. (Yes, speedtest.net - I'm talking about you!). I have been told that my 10 Mbps cable line can download data at 38.3 Mbps, and a variety of other ludicrously large figures. The only one I really trust is ThinkBroadband.com's one.

esuhl

The problem is that there is no easy way to measure your Internet connection speed by itself. All you can do is connect to a server and measure the speed of the connection between the two machines.

That speed not only depends on the connection you have to your ISP, but also the connection the speed test server has to their ISP, how far away you are from the server, atmospheric conditions (which affect electrical conductivity), the amount of other traffic on the networks, etc.

So all of these speed tests are imperfect. One might give you a more "realistic" result at a particular time and a very "unrealistic" result at another. Without knowing how loaded the servers are and how the quality and length of cabling affects speeds, the tests are more-or-less the equivalent of licking your finger and holding it up to determine wind speed.

joe2cool

ok cheers guys..........