Speedtests - how acurate are they?

[wagnerk]

Hi guy's/gal's,

Got a question for you. Say you're the IT manager at a school (or any organisation really), you pay £12,500 pa for a 10 meg internet connection (apparently both ways). I ran a speed test online from Prometric (yep the guys that do the MS tests), and the following is the overview of our connection at 20.00hrs this evening:

Download Speed: 3.63Mbps
Upload Speed: 309kbps
QoS: 97%

Now you decide to run the same test at home, you've got a 4 meg line into your house and on top of that running wireless in your house (so running the speed test wirelessly). Here are the results:

Download Speed: 2.41Mbps
Upload Speed: 378kbps
QoS: 70% (remember this is running over wireless)

I don't know the contention rate (so don't ask, will find out though). However what do you think of the results and of speed tests in general? I want to put up a good case for leaving the current ISP and moving to another one. I will be taking readings for a few weeks and various points during the day. Moving ISP's will be a big financial commitment as most likely I'd be going down the route of a dedicated line (so we're talking about over £13k for the line with a 1 to 1 contention rate) and internal filtering (like a blogg box, etc).

Any assistance will be greatly appreciated

-Ken

[wagnerk]

Just done the same speed test on my wife's PC that plugged direct in the router/switch, here are the results:

Download Speed: 3.21Mbps
Upload Speed: 388kbps
QoS: 85%

-Ken

[OceanPacific]

Okay, im assuming your the administrator for a schoot IT department, correct?

Why dont you call your ISP and tell them your not getting the speed you feel like you should be and they can run a study on it and possibly fix your problem.

[wagnerk]

Mate, I'm the IT Manager I've only just decide to do this test this evening, and yes I'll be contacting my ISP in the morning (as well as continuing to monitor the speeds for reference). I wanted to know other peoples view on the results that I got, plus how reliable these speed tests are.

And besides, because we've had alot of internet downtime compared to other industries. I want to get sometime alot (I'd even settle for alittle) bit more reliable. We host our own website and e-mail server, we hire out IT Services & the Repro dept, with the view of hiring out our finance dept. So everytime our service goes down, there is a potential loss of business.

-Ken

[derkit]

In any experiment check your results against multiple sources. This will either backup your assumptions or it will work against them - either way you have the makings of a business case to stay or change.

Never having heard of this speed test, I tried it on my connection:

Prometric
Download: 1.14 Mbps
Upload: 332kbps
QoS: 11%

From Giganews Linky
Download: 5455 kbps.

Also, repeat the same experiment a couple of times:

Prometric:
Down: 1.14, 1.95, 0.716, 2.09, 2.82
Up: 332, 338, 333, 339, 339
QoS: 11%, 23%, 25%, 50%, 79%

Take the average - drop the highest and lowest and average the rest: 1.72, 337, 33%

Giganews:
5455, 5211, 5420, 5146, 4475

Take the average: 5259kbps

Huge difference, try some more and you'll be able to tell which is more likely to be telling the truth - from my download speeds from any source mine is definitely more like the giganews one.

[r.h.lee]

wagnerk,

Originally Posted by wagnerk

Hi guy's/gal's,

Got a question for you. Say you're the IT manager at a school (or any organisation really), you pay £12,500 pa for a 10 meg internet connection (apparently both ways).

What networking technology is your internet connection?

Originally Posted by wagnerk

I ran a speed test online from Prometric (yep the guys that do the MS tests), and the following is the overview of our connection at 20.00hrs this evening:

Download Speed: 3.63Mbps
Upload Speed: 309kbps
QoS: 97%

Now you decide to run the same test at home, you've got a 4 meg line into your house and on top of that running wireless in your house (so running the speed test wirelessly). Here are the results:

Download Speed: 2.41Mbps
Upload Speed: 378kbps
QoS: 70% (remember this is running over wireless)

I don't know the contention rate (so don't ask, will find out though). However what do you think of the results and of speed tests in general? I want to put up a good case for leaving the current ISP and moving to another one. I will be taking readings for a few weeks and various points during the day. Moving ISP's will be a big financial commitment as most likely I'd be going down the route of a dedicated line (so we're talking about over £13k for the line with a 1 to 1 contention rate) and internal filtering (like a blogg box, etc).

Any assistance will be greatly appreciated

-Ken

[greenbrucelee]

I have ran multple tests on my line from various tests sites. I am paying for a 2 megh connection most place say I get 1.87 meg the lowest one has said 1.6 and the highest 1.98.

When doing the tests I think it depends what time of day it is as I have done it with speedtest.net and I have had 1.7 at dinner time and 1.9 at night time.

[ThomasMc]

i prefer to download something like ubuntu ISO to gauge my speed (currently 2.24MB /Sec)

[Ozzy2k7]

The best test is your ISP, they will be able to tell you what they are putting down the line. Thats your real test.

[GiddyG]

Ken,

From the comments you've made, I assume you've got an SDSL connection with a 1:1 contention ratio? I'd expect the 'speed' to be based on distance from exchange, just as with ADSL; however, whatever you're getting downstream I'd also expect you to get upstream too. That's the idea of SDSL, as far as I am concerned.

John

[wagnerk]

Originally Posted by r.h.lee

wagnerk,
What networking technology is your internet connection?

I believe it's fibre but to tell the truth, I've forgotten what exactly They upgraded it either last year or the year before, told me what it is and I filed it (as it wasn't high priorty for me to remember). Will dig out the paperwork tomorrow

Originally Posted by greenbrucelee

I have ran multple tests on my line from various tests sites. I am paying for a 2 meg connection most places say I get 1.87 meg the lowest one has said 1.6 and the highest 1.98.

When doing the tests I think it depends what time of day it is as I have done it with speedtest.net and I have had 1.7 at dinner time and 1.9 at night time.

That's true, that's why I'll be taking multiple test thru-out the day over the next few weeks

Originally Posted by Ozzy2k7

The best test is your ISP, they will be able to tell you what they are putting down the line. Thats your real test.

We've paid for a 10meg line, a couple of weeks ago they told us that's what we're getting 10megs. That's another reason for the speedtests.

-Ken

[wagnerk]

Originally Posted by GiddyG

Ken,

From the comments you've made, I assume you've got an SDSL connection with a 1:1 contention ratio? I'd expect the 'speed' to be based on distance from exchange, just as with ADSL; however, whatever you're getting downstream I'd also expect you to get upstream too. That's the idea of SDSL, as far as I am concerned.

John

At first I thought it was SDSL but there's no where on their website that actually states this, in fact it just states "broadband" which is a very generic term (and since I kinda remember the engineer talking about fibre when he was installing the upgraded line, I assume it's some sort of fibre). It's suppose to be a 1 to 1 contention rate and 10meg both ways.

-Ken

[wagnerk]

Originally Posted by derkit

...From Giganews Linky...

Thanks for that link mate

On the work connection, it reaches approx 4700 kbps. In my opinion that's still low for a 10meg connection, isn't it?

-ken

[derkit]

Originally Posted by wagnerk

Thanks for that link mate

On the work connection, it reaches approx 4700 kbps. In my opinion that's still low for a 10meg connection, isn't it?

-ken

no worries.

I'd say its a tad slow - my numbers 5500-ish is on a 8meg line (connecting to the line @ 8032Kb/448Kb) - normally download maxing at around 680Kb/s.

[The_Geek]

Having worked for an ISP, when you call to report slow internet the CSR is first going to ask you where you ran your speed test from. Their next comment is going to be that if the speed test was ran from an "off network" site, there can be network issues that can cause the slowness.

For example, I have Charter here. I run a speed test from a site on AT&T's network, but I have to cross Verizon's network to get to the speed test site. Verizon is having latency on their network which is affecting my speed test results. Charter's network is running ok (which never really happens, I'm just using them for example).

If you ISP has their own site to test from and you are not getting your speeds, then they have an issue on their network.

With that said, do run your tests from multiple sites all over the world so when you call your ISP you have that ammo.