internet speed test

[hermetic]

After the original 2 week settling in period reboot your modem at least once a month, and if you want consistent speed, don't use wifi! It works like this, when you install your new modem, it goes into testing mode and checks your line to see what speed the connection will run at reliably and consistently with the least "packet loss" When it has settled on a speed, it stops testing and that is the maximum speed the connection will run at. If you reboot the modem every month, you initiate a new testing regime, and also get a random route again and the speed usually improves. Bewre of the fact that the internet, and websites are a "contended service" the more people online, or the more people using that website, the slower it will be! Wifi works best line of sight in the room where the modem is! and does the same tests until it establishes the maximum speed that the connection will stand with minimal packet loss, but it tests virtually constantly, and regardless of what the makers say it does not go round corners, it is a straight line technology, and the higher the frequency, the more this applies! It will bounce or reflect round a corner, but you will lose about 25 to 30% speed at every change in direction. Wifi also loses strength with double glazed K glass windows, and things like foil backed plasterboard or foil faced insulation are just about impervious to it, it will penetrate dry wood quite well, but is absorbed by moisture! If you want fast, use a wire!
Phil

 

[Fastdruid]

In my case a test on Ookla shoes slow. A bt test it suddenly speeds up. Then an Ookla test shows the faster speed too. Almost as if bt go oh crap they've noticed and remove the throttling.

The more things change and yet they stay the same! Many moons ago I used to work for a company that had a whole load of ISDN lines to branches. These would regularly stop working and the helpdesk would ring BT and get them to test it, BT would deny there were any issues at all...at which point regular as clockwork the line would come back up.

We theorised either they were "borrowing" bandwidth overnight or just the test restarted things and hence it would work again afterwards.

 

[armalites]

All of these speed tests are just a snap shot in time. If you want to see a better indication of what is happen then try

Continuous internet speed test tool

Select run in browser, it will run for 10 minutes continuously and give you an average over that time plus show you the avg/min. It's surprising how many times you will see it drop into low numbers. I've just run it on mine and the highest was 41 and the low was 1.3.

There is so much going on in the background and you will never get a straight answer out of anyone.When we first got fibre we were regularly showing 60+ meg. Now it's generally around 40. We went through a spell where it would drop out all the time and suspect there was stuff going on at the exchange with a new developement.

Some routers are much better than others, we are with Plusnet and the service is good but their router worked but did seem to drop out on a fairly regular basis. I bought a used BT Home Hub6 on ebay as they are supposed to be very good. Sure enough the Home Hub6 is rock solid and a drop out is extremely rare.

 

[droopsnoot]

so it'll either be £22/month to continue my current rolling contract, £16/month for the same on a 2-year contract, or £18 for 40Gb on the same 2-year contract.

Or when I phone them to talk about cancellation, I can have 40Gb/month for £10, slightly less than I pay now. That's sort-of tempting and has thrown me off a little, but I still only have relatively low-speed and that whole leaving-it-in-an-open-window thing.

 

[hermetic]

When I was MD of the ISP I used to run, we used plusnet exclusively for all our networks, and they were very good at holding BT's feet to the fire when BT (very often) failed to perform up to contract, so much so that BT bought them out, but I have just gone to plusnet for my feed at the workshop, and they are still excellent!
Phil