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 Post subject: Surfing speed
 Post Posted: Wed Jan 20, 2016 11:20 am 
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This is a question of curiosity, I am not having a problem. I use three Internet speed test sites to make sure that I am getting what I am paying for from Verizon:
http://www.speedtest.net/
http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest
https://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

When I first turn my pc on in the morning all three tell me that I am getting 58 mbps. This pleases me greatly as I am paying for 50. As the day goes on the speedtest.net site shows me getting slower and slower and slower. By the end of the day I am barely getting 6-8 mbps but the other two still show me getting 58. Plus, my surfing is just as fast. What I am curious about mostly is that speedtest.net is usually the most highly recommended site to test your surfing speed at most forums.

Inquiring minds want to know, what happens to make that one site show me surfing at a snails pace?
Acadia

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 Post subject: Re: Surfing speed
 Post Posted: Wed Jan 20, 2016 12:30 pm 
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Weird. I tested all three just now and they were consistent. 180mbs down and 11 up.


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 Post subject: Re: Surfing speed
 Post Posted: Wed Jan 20, 2016 12:41 pm 
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Have you tried selecting a different server with speedtest.net? It could be as simple as server congestion.

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 Post subject: Re: Surfing speed
 Post Posted: Wed Jan 20, 2016 12:58 pm 
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The internet super highway suffers from congestion. Sometimes some routes are more bottled up than others. As the day wears on more users start traveling and things slow down. All these test sites use different routes and some you can choose yourself. So, it's most likely a bit of traffic congestion for that particular route. Actually, the amazing thing is that you get such consistent results. As you know I'm jealous of your high speed connection. I'd be thrilled if I could get 6-8 mbps here in the middle of the woods.

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 Post subject: Re: Surfing speed
 Post Posted: Wed Jan 20, 2016 1:31 pm 
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Manny Carvalho wrote:
As you know I'm jealous of your high speed connection. I'd be thrilled if I could get 6-8 mbps here in the middle of the woods.

Heh, and we are all jealous of Peter!

But given a choice, I'd take the "middle of the woods" over high speed.
Acadia

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 Post subject: Re: Surfing speed
 Post Posted: Wed Jan 20, 2016 9:53 pm 
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Acadia, here is an example of what Manny and I are saying about server congestion.

The first result, this is about my average.
Image

I had to go through a lot of servers available via Speedtest.net to find a really bad one but the following result was within 5 minutes of the first.
Image

There is a lot that is involved with an internet connection. It is not just what speed you have through your ISP. Say that you have a 1 Gigabit per second connection which is actually available in some areas with fiber optics. Now you go to a site that can only send at 1 megabit per second. Your 1 terabyte connection means nothing as you cannot receive faster than the site's server sends.

I could actually set up a server in my apartment and do away with my hosting for my sites and Computer Haven. Actually I used to have a server in a virtual machine to test sites on which I was working so I know for fact that I could set it up. Since I rarely use my laptop I could dedicate it to work as a web server. This would be a good example of how speed tests can, at times, be deceptive. OK, so now my server is out there to be used by Speedtest.net. You connect to my server to check your speed and are all upset at your ISP because you only see a download speed of 4.5 Megabits per second. It is not the speed of your ISP that is actually causing the bad result, it is the fact that my server can only put out at ~4.5 Megabits per second.

BTW, the above scenario is exactly why you will normally see Speedtest.net results showing an upload speed of 10% or less of the download speed. On a home or personal account the ISP does not want you to set up a web server. They want you to pay more for a business class account to get the higher upload speeds. Theoretically, if they did not throttle down your upload speeds, your upload/download speed should be REALLY close to the same.

For any that may be a little confused with my above references about upload and download speeds in relation to the above about web servers:
1) Download speed equates to how fast you can get information via the Internet.
2) Upload speed equates to how fast you can send information via the Internet.

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 Post subject: Re: Surfing speed
 Post Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2016 3:44 pm 
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My speed stays consistent since I got BT Infinity. It's not full fibre but fibre to the box that comes into the village then comes over the original copper telephone wires into my house.

Before over broadband I'd get just under 4 Mb/s download 0.38 Mb/s upload but it would drop of at different times of the day.

This is what I get now no matter what time of day it is. It can go slightly up and down depending on the server I try.
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 Post subject: Re: Surfing speed
 Post Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2016 8:14 pm 
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Mine stays consistent also Joan... on MOST test servers. I had to go through several different test servers before I was able to get the bad result in my last post. ;)

My basic point was that connection speed is not just about how fast your connection is, it also a matter of how fast the server that you are connected to can send. If Acadia consistently gets speed results from speedtest.net in the 50's in the morning, and it drastically drops in the evening, it is more likely an issue with congestion on the server that is being used for the test than it is an issue with the ISP connection.

This is crude but let's say that you connect to a web server that can send at 100 megabits per second. Now let's say that you have my connection which averages ~66 megabits per second. If I am the only person accessing that server my results will look fine. Now let's consider the situation if there are three others accessing the server. Not exactly how it works but good enough for this example... The best result any of the four could expect would be 25 megabits per second. If there were to be forty people connected; the best test result would be 2.5 megabits per second. It is all pretty simple math equating to how much output is available divided by how many people are using.

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 Post subject: Re: Surfing speed
 Post Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2016 10:28 am 
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I agree it's the amount using it that can effect the service but I know since upgrading the service has been steady with no drop offs.

Mind you where I live we're lucky we can get part fibre now, I know Virgin are advertising speeds of 200Mb/s coming soon but that's for the big cities no way they'd come round here.
Many parts of Wales are still lagging behind the rest of the country. I'm lucky I get a mobile signal here quite a few of the carriers don't work.

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 Post subject: Re: Surfing speed
 Post Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2016 8:49 pm 
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I understand that Joan but I can just about guarantee that if you used speedtest.net and tested on a dozen different servers one of them would probably give lesser results.

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 Post subject: Re: Surfing speed
 Post Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2016 8:51 am 
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I'll try that when I have a spare minute Jay.

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