Is there something wrong with thinkbroadband speed tests?

I'm pretty sure there is. Speedtest net, Speedtest.bbmax.co.uk and one or two others all show me my correct download speed, 60mbps (even up to 67mbps) and 2.9mbps upload speed for my 60mb connection. But thinkbroadband java and flash tests show me anywhere between 6mbps and 10mbps sec down, and 1.8 to 2.9mbps up. So it pretty much gets the upload part right.

Doing the tests right now for instance, they're currently showing me these low download speeds consistently, while the other sites are currently still showing me the high speeds. I'm not worried about my speeds because I know I'm getting my 60mb, but just curious if others have noticed this from thinkbroadband. Perhaps it's outdated and not optimally configured for high speed fibre optic?

I raised this before a long time ago and I think the answer wasn't the issue with TBB, but with the peering between VM and TBB.

As for it not being able to hand high speed fibre optic...
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/videos/broadband-speed...

In reply to a post by Roman5:

Doing the tests right now for instance, they're currently showing me these low download speeds consistently, while the other sites are currently still showing me the high speeds. I'm not worried about my speeds because I know I'm getting my 60mb, but just curious if others have noticed this from thinkbroadband. Perhaps it's outdated and not optimally configured for high speed fibre optic?

Ask yourself how many other sites are therefore slow? Is it only the big speedtest sites that Virgin Media are able to connect to quickly ?

There were some routing issues with TBB today from about 16:00 - 18:00.

I noticed that the forum was slow for me around dinner time but a speedtest then was spot on.

During my time on 50Mbps I never saw much over 30Mbps from TBB although speedtest.net showed 50 all the time. Genuine differences as shown on my Tomato firmware router bandwidth charts. Never did get to the bottom of it as plenty of others saw the full 50. Strange stuff.

There was a fair few issues that were nothing to do with thinkbrioadband today on the internet.

Also http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5260-virgin-media... points to something we have shown time after time to Virgin, seems they may be taking notice now it has got this bad with spotify.

Speedtest.net can actually still give a good result even with stalls.

Also 67 Mbps from a 60 Mbps connection - does that not sound a little high to people?

@pete thomson, interesting video, thanks. I'd actually forgotten that one of my speed tests last friday, (the day the engineer installed the superhub and switched over from 10mb to 60mb), was a thinkbroadband test, giving me 59.56 Mbps. Doh! So, yeah, guess it does work. Not sure then why it's currently giving me very low speed readings. Here's three screenshots from last friday of different speed tests I did within a few seconds of each other.


http://i.imgur.com/NmgZD.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/szjFw.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/oroQT.jpg

Edited by Roman5 (Fri 01-Jun-12 01:04:31)

I get terrible results via sky broadband on here too

Everything else is fine. Never had a download below 3 mb/s on my 40mbps sky package

TBB reports as low as 5 mbps for me... I've given up trusting it.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Speedtest.net can actually still give a good result even with stalls.

It is more generous to the ISP than the TBB test which just gives a flat average I believe. Speedtest.net document their methodology here - https://support.speedtest.net/entries/20862782-how-d...

When I checked what was happening on the connection using the Tomato firmware bandwidth graphing is was very clear that both TBB and Speedtest.net were accurately reporting the results and for some reason (probably VM peering) TBB was way way down on speed. I'm sure the TBB test gives accurate results and have no reason to doubt that it has sufficient bandwith to test VM connections - it's just that some VM connections don't show their full potential with it while others do.

VM does have problems - some severe local congestion issues and peering problems that only affect some routes.

"some severe local congestion issues and peering problems that only affect some routes"

Seb has spent a few hours testing, and reporting this to Virgin Media, since we run our network we can change routing temporarily

Not quite sure what you meant by that but I can say that I just got an email from the Openreach bloke looking into the data error preventing me from ordering Infinity and he said he'd fixed it. (Sent 20:19 and there was one last night from same bloke apologising for the delay sent at 22:36 ????). Quick check shows I can order Infinity now so I'll be doing so tomorrow morning and then VM's peering and local congestion problems will be of zero concern to me. One very happy bunny