Thinkbroadband Speedtest capped speed? 350Mbps Virgin Media

Hi,

We recently got VM's 350Mbps package setup but the thinkbroadband Speedtest is suggesting that our speeds are far from adverstised. https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/15231769362...

However, when I perform the tests over at speedtest.net, fast.com, or uswitch.com the speeds sit firmly between 320-400Mbps. And when downloading a test file (e.g game) download speeds fluctuate between 20-45MBps (350Mbps~)

Is this a throughput issue with the tester on this site?

Cheers

Edited by AstroflashTB (Sun 08-Apr-18 12:28:17)

If we were congesting things on our side we would let everyone know, so no we are not filling the 10 Gbps capacity we have on the tester.

speedtest.net - will source lowest latency files and as Virgin as an onnet tester it will be that
fast.com - will use files from Netflix CDN which is again onnet with a provider the size of Virgin
uswitch - no idea of algorithm

As has been proven in the past though, Virgin Media runs some parts of its network hot, they admitted to losing 1% of their network last year and a number of sites became very slow to access.

You're not alone! I'm on a 330 Mbps FTTPoD connection and will NEVER see more than ~ 250 Mbps on the TBB tester (wired). Despite speedtesters such as speedtest.net giving me 300 Mbps day & night:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/7209412367

Since speedtest.net is multithread only, you'd think the TBB tester would at least have similar HTTP x6 results? Nope, they're also way below 300 Mbps:



However I'm not overly concerned because I can download at ~ 40 MB/s at all times and when my ISP (FluidOne) carried out Nut TCP tests they also found I was getting the full throughput (~ 310 Mbps) on my line.

Edited by baby_frogmella (Sun 08-Apr-18 12:15:27)

I see the same results with my 350mb VM package, every other speedtest shows between 350 to 388 mb/s except TBB one, as like other poster I'm not worried as can download games at full bandwidth appx 45MB/s, I have a rubbish memory but seem to recall VM's routing to TBB being mentioned before as the cause.

In reply to a post by AstroflashTB:

Is this a throughput issue with the tester on this site?

Cheers

I stopped using the Thinkbroadband speedtester a while ago.. It's either completely inaccurate, or misleading to the point of being useless for higher speed connections.

Speedtest.net is acknowledeged as the leading speed tester and yet the Thinkbroadband staff regularly rubbish it. Here is my speedtest.net result from a few minutes ago:
https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/d/43c3c232-3428-...

and here is the Thinkbroadband one:
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/15231848317...

As usual since the so called new test, it only shows my speed as being around half what it really is. Up until the end of last year, the TB one was more or less accurate showing in excess of 300 Mbs after I upgraded to Vivid 350 last October.

To further confirm the Thinkbroadband tests's inaccuracy, I am also one of Virginmedia's quality control triallists and have an independently operated Samknows testing unit monitoring my connection 24 hours per day. I have access to those records and receive an update every month. They also also confirm I am getting the 350 Mbs service I should be. Here is a link to a snapshot of the latest report from a few days ago.
https://imgur.com/a/EbWq3

It's ridiculous that the TB staff keep claiming only their test is accurate and every one elses is wrong.

In reply to a post by Derek_S:

It's ridiculous that the TB staff keep claiming only their test is accurate and every one elses is wrong.

+1

The fact that even TBB multithreaded speedtests on our lines don't match speedtest.net suggests there are issues with the TBB tester. But like I said I'm not too bothered as real life performance suggests otherwise.

In reply to a post by Derek_S:

To further confirm the Thinkbroadband tests's inaccuracy, I am also one of Virginmedia's quality control triallists and have an independently operated Samknows testing unit monitoring my connection 24 hours per day. I have access to those records and receive an update every month. They also also confirm I am getting the 350 Mbs service I should be. Here is a link to a snapshot of the latest report from a few days ago.

If Virgin Media know you have a Samknows box then the project is flawed. Most people whom have Samknows boxes DON'T tell their ISP, so that the ISP cannot make any "adjustments" to their connection. That is assuming you are part of the Samknows/Ofcom reporting project. It may be there is a separate Virgin Media/Samknows project.

Do I rubbish other testers? Or do I talk about why there may be differences...

The key one is that as was shown last year the link through and out of the Virgin Media network to us is often congested.

If a major broadband provider wants to run links out of their network hot then that is their choice.

Or there are issues on one of the links between you and the test server

Well 80% of the time TBB Speedtest matches what Speedtest.net shows, well the x6 do anyhow.



SpeedTest.net Results

As you can see for me they are very close to the speeds, the only thing that is way off is the latency, you can see the ping to the speedtest shows a latency in the 20's however my pings are 4ms shown below:

ping -4 speedtest7.thinkbroadband.com

Pinging speedtest7.thinkbroadband.com [80.249.106.133] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 80.249.106.133: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=53
Reply from 80.249.106.133: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=53
Reply from 80.249.106.133: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=53
Reply from 80.249.106.133: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=53

Ping statistics for 80.249.106.133:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 4ms, Maximum = 4ms, Average = 4ms

My BQM also shows about 4ms too.

But yeah, there are times that the TBB Speedtest shows completly different readings.
But I only check my speeds when I notice a difference in responsivness when doing every day stuff and TBB Tests shows this where as the other tester showed full speed.

I am not saying TBB Speedtest are correct or not correct, but just because multiple of other speedtests show around the same results apart from TBB's one doesn't mean the others are correct and TBB is wrong, TBB's result "might" be wrong, but you shouldn't assume that it is.

Also the different browsers show different results for all the tests, I am not a fan of Chrome, sadly this browser seems the best for me when doing the tests.

I also have a Whitebox connected to my connection and while it does show fairly close to the speed I am paying for it does show drops down from 310Mbps to 200Mbps in the evening, where as Speedtest.net didn't show this however TBB tests did.

Like I already said I am not siding with anyone, when I have connection issues I do loads of tests by different tester and then compare the results and go with the average results.

Paul

Edited by PaulKirby (Sun 08-Apr-18 13:50:29)