speed meters

have had poor AOL d/load speeds, and have been monitoring withTBB speed check. which gives me a fair idea of what's happening in reality . AOL tech support guided me to SPEEDTEST.NET which always gives me a 2Mb d/load result, even when TBB shows I only have less than 0.4 Mbs.
Interestingly SPEEDTEST.NET is run by Carphone Warehouse, so there is a tie in with AOL.Am I just being too cynical or what?

Have you done the TBB speedtest on both ports (80 and 8095), to see if AOL are throttling on certain ports?

done that and no difference, but it's at it's worst in the evening
Looks like Traffic management to me but I'm only getting the runaround from AOL, and they can't understand that up until about 1700hrs I can get up to 2Mb d/l after that it's slower than dial-up!

In reply to a post by glendower:

getting the runaround from AOL, and they can't understand that up until about 1700hrs I can get up to 2Mb d/l after that it's slower than dial-up!

More like they can understand (because their product is close to useless), but won't admit it .

Thanks Ade, feel better now!

Speedtest.net seems to only report your peak throughput. TBB tester reports your average throughput.

It may well be that your connection can achieve highspeed in short bursts but cannot sustain that. That's a likely symptom of network congestion.