Page 1 of Accurate Broadband speedtesters?

Can anyone recommend one?
Using speedtest.net I`m getting varying answers from 20Mb (which is Glasgow believe it or not!) to 30Mb in a few English servers.

Upgraded last week to Sky Fibre and should be up to 40Mb, I`m very close to the cabinet and the router thing reports 39996 downstream, so even the engineer said it should be almost the full 40 meg.
PS3 network test reports 31Mb consistently.
JDs auto tester thing also reporting from 20 to 30.

So I`m guessing I`m getting in the mid 20s but would like ot be 100% sure before I start the calls to Sky, had 3 months of grief with O2 before the switch with their crap speeds and it never got resolved.

Oh and can anyone explain why a wired connection to the router will give a better result when the same laptop used wireless is only around 5 feet unobstructed from the same router....?

TIA as usual.

Jimbo : oÞ

"There`s that word again... is there a problem with the Earth`s gravitational pull in the future?"

Quote:
Jimbo :oÞ says...
"Oh and can anyone explain why a wired connection to the router will give a better result when the same laptop used wireless is only around 5 feet unobstructed from the same router....?"
Wired should always give a better result, because wireless has more overhead per packet (due to encryption and error correction) and quoted wireless speeds are always the absolute maximum you could get in laboratory conditions with no interference on the frequency at all.

In reality you'll be competing with everything from cordless phones (similar frequencies), nearby wireless access points, any other wireless device on the same network (even if they aren't using much data, just being connected uses some packets here and there), interference from all sorts of things on completely different frequencies causing harmonic distortion... and all of that is on a good day. :)


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My microwave kills my wireless...

I don`t know about accurate, but I often use the iPlayer diagnostics page to check my speed as it averages out over several runs, in addition to Speedtest and jDast. For what it`s worth, I get the most consistent results from jDast.

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Yeah, forget the wireless for speed tests Jim, they`re crap (unless you`re sitting in a radiowave protected room!)

As for the PS3, I wouldn`t trust it either. It reports only 25Mbps (ish) on my 55Mbps connection.
Speedtest.net (on the PC / laptop wired in to the router) seems to give me the most accurate readings.

Think I tried the iPlayer one Jit, and iirc it reported even less. I shall, however, try your link after this reply ;)

Miles: the PS3/Speedtest experience was exactly the same for me until my debacle recently with O2 and the speedtest results are varying wildly now.
Is it even possible my line could be spliced or something further down the line?
We are in a 4-in a block building so when I had my 2nd line put in they struggled and started talking about using a DAC etc but then they apparently got it sorted.

Lines are carried to the house from a pole in the back garden that feeds around 8 to 10 houses from one pole. I`m probably talking mince but it`s just something that I`m not sure of and pretty recently a BT Business Hub started to appear in wireless searches making me think they may have had something to do with the issues too.
Tried channel changing etc but all seem to stay the same.

Oh, and you`re probably the man to ask this one Miles... I know on the old Virgin cable setups the speed was set by the modem (once changed a modem in the very early days that was 2Mb iirc to one that should have been 10 and got 10 lol)but Sky offer "normal" (40mb) and "Pro" (70Mb) for about a tenner more... if I`m having issues now I`m ropey as to whether I could attain higher speeds but any idea how Sky Fibre/ BT Infinity speeds are "given"?

Jimbo : oÞ

"There`s that word again... is there a problem with the Earth`s gravitational pull in the future?"

Reply for Jit:

Yup, had used the iPlayer one, recognised it soon as it came up.
It reports:

Download Speed : 24501 kbps
Streaming Speed 1: 10320 kbps
Streaming speed 2: 20750 kbps
Streaming speed 3: 20289 kbps

Then the wee chart below states "Your Connection: 17119kbps"

Confused...? I am! LOL

Jimbo : oÞ

"There`s that word again... is there a problem with the Earth`s gravitational pull in the future?"

The PS3 isn`t even worth considering as a speed tester. I have a 120Mbps service and I don`t get close to that, even on wireless N.

Since it was upgraded to deal with faster speeds Speedtest.net has been the best for me. It has shown that I can achieve downloads of over 124Mbps and uploads of almost 12Mbps, which is accurate according to the config in the SH2.

With regard to configs, with Virgin`s kit the config is held in the modem/router and dynamically adjusted for things like STM (they will actually apply a different config on the fly to traffic manage your speed). With ADSL I believe the line speed is determined at the provider`s end and no config is held on the device (as you can pretty much use any modem/router with any ADSL service).







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Cheers Chris.
I`m on sky fibre, not adsl now afaik.
Think the tech term is fttc, fibre to the cabinet, then the existing copper wiring from cabinet to house.

If this is a variant if the adsl type then tell me to shuddup ;)

Checked the bt site before, apparently my line can do up to 69mb so might ring sky later and upgrade. It`s only an extra tenner and if I can get in excess of 55mb i`d be happy

Jimbo : oÞ

"There`s that word again... is there a problem with the Earth`s gravitational pull in the future?"

also, remember to make sure when doing the speedtest, you`ve only got that computer connected to the internet and it`s not running any apps/tabs other than the speedtest one

Quote:
Jimbo :oÞ says...
I`m on sky fibre, not adsl now afaik.Sorry, I missed the fibre bit. It`s still an ADSL modem/router that you end up connecting to, so the config is the same (to my knowledge).







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