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Are speed checkers honest?
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Chair, Martin Lewis · Editor, Marcus Herbert
Replies
Turn off Wireless on the router
Have only 1 device connected to the router via ethernet to do speed tests.
If it's a windows device, boot the device up into Safe Mode with Networking.
Perform some speed tests on a reputable site over different servers - I like Speedtest.net
Even then it all depends on where the speed test server is located on the internet, your pipe to the ISP might be working at full speed but then the hop to the speed test server itself might then become the bottle neck.
For slow internet such as ADSL/VDSL it shouldn't be an issue but when using a proper internet connection with say 500mpbps - to gigabit speeds then a lot of other external factors come into play.
One thing that is often overlooked is that most cheap routers simply can't achieve those high speeds through the WAN to LAN interface and will crap out well before hitting the maximum line speed.
But speed tests are only really useful in confirming your ISP is giving you what you pay for in terms of the pipe into your home.
Discounts, coupons and cashback:
2019 = £1,443.52
2020 = £1,191,76
Which router do you use to run throughput speed tests on?
Also, that's why i suggested running a test over different servers
For me, throughput speed tests are helpful as part as fault diagnosis.
In reality, despite having lots of devices connected via Wifi and even connecting via wifi or wired it makes little difference to my speed. At home I have 150Mbps fibre and I get within a few percent of that regardless of time of day, number of devices connected etc. At work I have 900Mbps and that caps out within a few percent as well on wired, on wireless it caps out at the max rate of the wifi, I have a Google Nest Wifi as the router on the network both which is ac, no ax kit to test it on that way.
I guess issues could occur when someone had problems with their home network or wifi and they thought that was a problem with their broadband speed, but for most people a test over wifi is more than adequate.
However any Linux based router with SSH capability should be able to install something like iPerf3 / Speedtest-cli for example and run it directly on the device.
Yes definitely useful but segmenting the speed tests helps determine where to bottleneck is, something like Lan Speed Test can be used between devices on the internal network to determine throughput.
Discounts, coupons and cashback:
2019 = £1,443.52
2020 = £1,191,76
Over the last 14 or so years i've worked for 4 UK based ISPs but none of them either specifically prioritized traffic through that site.
One of the main problems i got when i done customer tech support was slow speeds on speed tests. Probably accounted for about 70% of the calls coming in. (literally hundreds of calls per week)
Out of about 70% of those calls. i'd say about 5% or less had an actual issue that was the ISP's responsibility. Other times it was either wifi issues, or other devices saturating the bandwidth.