Switched to Infinity 2 this morning

engineer says it's sync'd up at 80 / 20

The BTO engineer was done by 9am

Predicted (by the online checker) was 65.3 down and 20 up

[IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/1929586172.png[/IMG]
74 down 16 up

The tester on here (TBB) shows results that are lower than expected.
(hence not posted the result)


just need to change my sig on here now.

Edited by richarddawson (Thu 03-May-12 12:36:09)

In reply to a post by richarddawson:

engineer says it's sync'd up at 80 / 20

The BTO engineer was done by 9am

Predicted (by the online checker) was 65.3 down and 20 up

[IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/1929586172.png[/IMG]
74 down 16 up

The tester on here (TBB) shows results that are lower than expected.
(hence not posted the result)


just need to change my sig on here now.

Oooh, nice ping, too.

Enjoy it!

That sorts out the question raised in http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/bt/t/4119412-infini...

A customer will get the max the sync speed will allow and it will NOT be restricted by the checker predictions..

He was predicted 20 upstream and is getting 16. Doesn't really disprove anything.

It told me 20Mb up but ended up with 15Mb then after several days it picked up to 18Mb and has been stable ever since.
iechyd da

PS
No matter what I do or try I can't seem to change my sign, any idea's as to why?

Edited by deleted (Fri 04-May-12 09:45:33)

In reply to a post by paul1360:

No matter what I do or try I can't seem to change my sign, any idea's as to why?

Astrology is based on your date of birth, which is fairly constant.

Assuming you are going to the right place to change your sig, are you forgetting to click the Submit button at the bottom?

Remember that the observed throughput will always be lower than the sync rate.

On ADSL IIRC the maximum expected throughput was about 85% of sync rate. I'm told the expected maximum throughput on FTTC is more like 92%, though my results seem to agree with the 85: When I was on 40/10 the best speedtest results where 8.5mbit upstream IIRC (as far as I know I was syncing at the full 10 but I've not unlocked the modem to find out for sure), I've just moved to 80/20 and I'm now seeing 16.5 as the best result upstream though I've not done much testing yet.

And to think that I remember when you had to pay a hefty price to push any part of your local wired network faster than 10mbit/s...

My experience is that "observed" downstream speeds will be 97% of your sync thanks to the IP profile, and user-data throughput (i.e. your average HTTP speedtest result) will be about 94% of your sync thanks to an additional 2-3% of TCP overheads.

On the upstream however observed speeds are closer to 97% because there is no IP profile (in practice) - but most speed testers generally fail at testing fast upstream speeds.

Speedtest.net for example, usually comes up with 16.5mbps on mine line, TBB's speedtest shows only 6mbps, but Visualware's UDP test shows 18.5mbps. However a single FTP upload to my own server proceeds at 19.4mbps.

In any case the quick investigation of Speedtest.net's results shows bursty transmission and my line sitting idle for a third of the test, and a result that was considerably higher than the actual speed of data sent on the line during the test.

Basically, most speedtests are especially [censored] at uploads.

Edited by deleted (Fri 04-May-12 14:30:50)

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

... but most speed testers generally fail at testing fast upstream speeds.

Speedtest.net for example, usually comes up with 16.5mbps on mine line, TBB's speedtest shows only 6mbps ....

How close are your tbb upstream results to these? :-

02/02/12 00:49 Thu 36401 Kbps 6068 Kbps
31/01/12 17:06 Tue 35457 Kbps 6061 Kbps
22/01/12 10:59 Sun 36388 Kbps 6077 Kbps
07/12/11 00:24 Wed 35688 Kbps 6007 Kbps
18/11/11 23:57 Fri 36249 Kbps 5999 Kbps

In reply to a post by richarddawson:

The tester on here (TBB) shows results that are lower than expected.
(hence not posted the result)

Please do, it might help the guys at TBB work out why the TBB tester is so flaky with BT Infinity2 connections.
Here's mine (which is, BTW, the best result I've had from the TBB tester in weeks).


Here's my Speedtest.net result (for comparison).

It is worth pointing out if you try several of the Speedtest.net servers, you'll find a few in the UK which give similar results to the TBB tester.
I doubt if some Speedtest.net servers use multiple thread tests, while others use single thread tests (which has been touted as one possible explanation why the TBB test results are so much lower) so it points to some other problem (maybe some servers are being overloaded - possibly one being the TBB test server or BT have some routing issues).

If I try a Speedtest.net with two Xilo servers (one in Manchester, the other in Maidenhead) I get vastly different results (around 75Mbps/16Mbps and a ping of 10ms for the Manchester server, and around 28Mbps/12Mbps and a ping of 26ms for the Maidenhead server).
I'd find it hard to believe one Xilo server is applying the test in a vastly different way from another Xilo server, so it has to be to do with BT (throttling???), routing, or server congestion.
This makes no sense to me (unless BT are applying some far out routing) as I'm 44 miles from Maidenhead and 107 miles from Manchester (direct "as the crow flies" distances), so God knows where BT are routing my connection (if the ping to do a 214 mile round trip is 2.6 times lower than the ping to do an 88 mile round trip).

Edited by adebov (Fri 04-May-12 17:41:31)

In reply to a post by adebov:

This makes no sense to me (unless BT are applying some far out routing) as I'm 44 miles from Maidenhead and 107 miles from Manchester

Even in the ADSL days long before FTTC there was NO geographic connection between your ISP and where your traffic entered the internet. Unlike dialup days, or other countries (e.g. USA).

Also its very possible the speedtest servers are under heavy load.

What has Astrology got to do with me??? lol

Well now I think I did and checking now just found that it has changed, so once again I'm going to keep my mouth zipped up. lol
iechyd da

Not quite as bang on:

26/04/12 05:01 Thu 44019 Kbps 5660 Kbps
17/03/12 15:17 Sat 34207 Kbps 4891 Kbps
02/03/12 01:27 Fri 27920 Kbps 2451 Kbps
20/02/12 22:02 Mon 27628 Kbps 4704 Kbps
20/02/12 22:01 Mon 30960 Kbps 4701 Kbps
20/02/12 21:59 Mon 32960 Kbps 4707 Kbps

OK, if it helps clear this up ....

I fitted an 80/20 yesterday, predicted speed speed, 68 down, but full 80/20 sync seen.

In reply to a post by adebov:

This makes no sense to me (unless BT are applying some far out routing) as I'm 44 miles from Maidenhead and 107 miles from Manchester (direct "as the crow flies" distances), so God knows where BT are routing my connection (if the ping to do a 214 mile round trip is 2.6 times lower than the ping to do an 88 mile round trip).

The Manchester server is falsely labelled, it's actually in London.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Also its very possible the speedtest servers are under heavy load.

Routing plays a significant part, and not always in the way you'd expect.

For example the Preston Speedtest.net server is hosted on VM's network, yet delivers the slowest speeds to VM customers (<20mbps) while at the same time non-VM customers could achieve >90mbps from the same server even from abroad.

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

The Manchester server is falsely labelled, it's actually in London.

Well that's helpful - nice one Xilo

Err.. we have no hosted kit in London, so they're wrong.

Matt

Thanks, so it's in Manchester and whoever posted that it was mislabelled (and is in London) has got their wires crossed (or simply made it up).

Good, I'm glad it hasn't moved ...

Mind you, when I was on Infinity 40/10, I was getting pings to Manchester of around 10-15 ms ...

Now on 80/20, I get pings around 30+ to Manchester ...

Any ideas???

Rob

Probably...

We don't have any server kit in London.. but do have some routing gear. We'd open a London location but that already has a few.

Matt

Maybe Interleaving has been switched on (for your connection) and that's adding a bit (although I wouldn't expect it to double, or triple the ping delay).

I'm getting 10ms to the Manchester server and 26ms to the MK and Maidenhead servers.
I'm also getting 10ms to Gloucester, Coventry & Birmingham (all non-Xilo/Uno servers), so it looks like BT are routing my connection to the north-east (I'm about the same distance from Coventry and MK, and about the same distance from Maidenhead and Birmingham).

Maybe BT has just changed your routing (entry point onto the www) and it's coming out nowhere near Manchester (what about your pings to other Speedtest.net servers - what if you let it find the closest - what is the ping to that?).

Edited by adebov (Tue 08-May-12 22:01:36)

Hi,

Pingtest reckoned that Maidenhead was the best at 28 ms ... (I'm in York, and the region based shopping sites etc think I should shop in Newcastle - which I suppose is where the Ip appears to be attached to the backbone ???)

Most Speedtest pings come back at 35ms more or less wherever I choose to test. The Manchester one give me the most consistent speed of around 55/13 megs.

The ping though is a bit worrying. Was 10-15 ms from November 2011and then 25ms for the period 25/4 to 5/5 and then has been at 35ms since then.

I changed to 80/20 on 16/4 ... the last time I had the good pings was 13/4 (ie one day after I oprdered the upgrade!)

No coincidence I suspect. Also my IPP has dropped to 57/20 from 66/20 over the last couple of weeks.

On the 40/10 service I was getting 37.5/8 speeds, but now and then had the dreaded slow down until a hub reconnect was done.

On the 80/20, I am seeing 55/13 over my homeplugs - so can't complain - but I have had one instance of a slowdown to 0.5megs until I reconnected the HH3.

Cheers,

Rob

In reply to a post by adebov:

Thanks, so it's in Manchester and whoever posted that it was mislabelled (and is in London) has got their wires crossed (or simply made it up).

Neither actually, it was mislabelled, I reported it on the 20th March based on the following traceroute:

C:\Users\Administrator>tracert 91.199.78.82

Tracing route to speedtest.xilo.net [91.199.78.82]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms t1 [10.1.0.21]
2 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms gateway.lan [10.0.0.1]
3 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms gateway.bt [217.32.142.104]
4 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms 217.32.142.158
5 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms 213.120.163.90
6 13 ms 14 ms 13 ms 217.32.27.82
7 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms 217.32.27.178
8 14 ms 14 ms 13 ms acc1-10GigE-7-2-0.mr.21cn-ipp.bt.net [109.159.250.96]
9 24 ms 23 ms 23 ms core1-te0-12-0-1.ealing.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.250.22]
10 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms peer2-xe0-0-0.redbus.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.254.74]
11 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms 195.99.126.103
12 21 ms 20 ms 20 ms uk-dedicated-servers-154.gw.goscomb.net [93.89.90.154]
13 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms the-tcx.ukservers.com [78.110.166.101]
14 21 ms 21 ms 21 ms ge-0-1-0-6.v-243.rtr-1.bs3.mhd.uk.as44574.net [78.110.166.90]
15 23 ms 22 ms 22 ms ge-0-0-0.fw-c-0.bs3.mhd.uk.as44574.net [91.199.78.1]
16 23 ms 22 ms 23 ms speedtest.xilo.net [91.199.78.82]

Getting from London to Manchester in 2ms isn't possible on any commercial network, so it cannot be in Manchester. It was at the time within 2ms of London.

Since I reported it the server pointed to by the Manchester (Xilo) speed test has changed, it's now 31.193.12.35 so I guess they fixed it without responding to my support ticket.

Edited by deleted (Tue 08-May-12 23:13:54)

In reply to a post by RobFlet:

my IPP has dropped to 57/20 from 66/20 over the last couple of weeks.

You could well be on an interleaved connection, then.

In reply to a post by RobFlet:

On the 80/20, I am seeing 55/13 over my homeplugs - so can't complain - but I have had one instance of a slowdown to 0.5megs until I reconnected the HH3.

Are you using the Home-plugs when getting the poor (ish) pings?
Are they any better if directly connected via Ethernet?

In reply to a post by RobFlet:

Good, I'm glad it hasn't moved ...

Mind you, when I was on Infinity 40/10, I was getting pings to Manchester of around 10-15 ms ...

Now on 80/20, I get pings around 30+ to Manchester ...

Any ideas???

Rob

Well actually it has.

Or rather, it now points to a different sever, under the same label.

Am I missing something?
Where on that traceroute does it indicate a 2ms ping from Manchester to London?
I see no 2ms ping anywhere on the traceroute.

In reply to a post by adebov:

Am I missing something?
Where on that traceroute does it indicate a 2ms ping from Manchester to London?
I see no 2ms ping anywhere on the traceroute.

C:\Users\Administrator>tracert 91.199.78.82

Tracing route to speedtest.xilo.net [91.199.78.82]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms t1 [10.1.0.21]
2 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms gateway.lan [10.0.0.1]
3 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms gateway.bt [217.32.142.104]
4 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms 217.32.142.158
5 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms 213.120.163.90
6 13 ms 14 ms 13 ms 217.32.27.82
7 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms 217.32.27.178
8 14 ms 14 ms 13 ms acc1-10GigE-7-2-0.mr.21cn-ipp.bt.net [109.159.250.96]
9 24 ms 23 ms 23 ms core1-te0-12-0-1.ealing.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.250.22]
10 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms peer2-xe0-0-0.redbus.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.254.74]
11 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms 195.99.126.103
12 21 ms 20 ms 20 ms uk-dedicated-servers-154.gw.goscomb.net [93.89.90.154]
13 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms the-tcx.ukservers.com [78.110.166.101] <== London = 20ms
14 21 ms 21 ms 21 ms ge-0-1-0-6.v-243.rtr-1.bs3.mhd.uk.as44574.net [78.110.166.90]
15 23 ms 22 ms 22 ms ge-0-0-0.fw-c-0.bs3.mhd.uk.as44574.net [91.199.78.1]
16 23 ms 22 ms 23 ms speedtest.xilo.net [91.199.78.82] <== Destination = 22ms

22 - 20 = 2ms.

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

22 - 20 = 2ms.

Isn't each set of ping figures the ping between you and the server at that step on the traceroute? And the ping figures are not really related to how long it takes to get from one step to the next (and are more related to how long each server takes to get a message back to you). EDIT: Or how long each server takes to get round to responding to pings (based on the fact that's not it's primary function - pings often take a lower priority to actually routing).
Using your logic it took minus 4ms to get a message from Ealing to London and that just doesn't work.

Edited by adebov (Tue 08-May-12 23:29:27)

In reply to a post by adebov:

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

22 - 20 = 2ms.

Isn't each set of ping figures the ping between you and the server at that step on the traceroute? And the ping figures are not really related to how long it takes to get from one step to the next (and are more related to how long each server takes to get a message back to you).

If it takes 20ms to get from A to B, and 22ms to get from A to B to C then the difference is the time from B to C. Simple logic.

And no, traceroutes don't talk to "servers" nor do they "ping" any steps along the way, in fact Linux traceroutes usually don't ping anything at all.

If you want to learn about how traceroutes work, try here.

Using your logic it took minus 4ms to get a message from Ealing to London and that just doesn't work.

One router that does not respond to ICMP in a timely manner does not change the conclusion.

Edited by deleted (Tue 08-May-12 23:38:12)

In that case they still have a server in London (as I've just done a traceroute to the same IP address as you).
It took three ms to get from London to 91.199.78.82
So either Uno is lying (about not having a server in London - can't think why he'd be doing that, and surely he'd be more likely to know where his servers are located than you or I) or we're both reading too much into the response times between each step.

EDIT: In any case; I don't see why a fibre-optic cable couldn't get a signal from London to Manchester in 2ms (in a vacuum light can go 370+ miles in that time), so we only need to add a bit of delay for the server to respond.

Edited by adebov (Tue 08-May-12 23:43:46)

In reply to a post by adebov:

In that case they still have a server in London (as I've just done a traceroute to the same IP address as you).
It took three ms to get from London to 91.199.78.82
So either Uno is lying (about not having a server in London - can't think why he'd be doing that, and surely he'd be more likely to know where his servers are located than you or I) or we're both reading too much into the response times between each step.

EDIT: In any case; I don't see why a fibre-optic cable couldn't get a signal from London to Manchester in 2ms (in a vacuum light can go 370+ miles in that time), so we only need to add a bit of delay for the server to respond.

No, I said already the server has changed.

Manchester (Xilo) no longer points to 91.199.78.82, it now points to 31.193.12.35. I stated this clearly in my previous post:

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

Since I reported it the server pointed to by the Manchester (Xilo) speed test has changed, it's now 31.193.12.35 so I guess they fixed it without responding to my support ticket.

Data on most major networks takes about 6-8ms to get from Manchester to London. Data does not travel at the speed of light, not even down fibre optic cables. There's added delay for extra switches and routers in the way as well as amplifiers and repeaters. Try reading this or for more information go here

Manchester to the Docklands in London is about 325km by road. Under ideal conditions and at the speed of light (in fibre) a 650km round trip would take at least 3.2ms with no switches routers or amplifiers in the equation.

As a comparison, on BT it takes 9ms, on Virgin Media it takes 6ms, on JANET it takes 7ms (via Leeds) and Cogentco manages it in 5ms.

Edited by deleted (Wed 09-May-12 00:13:16)

How do you know that xilo IP address is Manchester? Could it be Maidenhead?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

How do you know that xilo IP address is Manchester? Could it be Maidenhead?

That was the IP address Wireshark showed my traffic going to/from when I clicked Manchester (Xilo) on the server selection page.

My presumption is Speedtest.net screwed up their flash configuration at some point. I reported it a couple months ago, it appears to have been fixed (though they never replied to my report). So the Manchester server is now in Manchester, or at least, you no longer connect to a London-ish server when you click Manchester.

Edited by deleted (Wed 09-May-12 00:06:01)

Thanks.

Nope, we have *no* servers in London, as I have said.

Matt

Maybe..

We were still seeing 60-90Mbit/s on Manchester.

Matt

[Snip]

Edited by deleted (Wed 09-May-12 00:43:37)

I mean sustained bandwidth for the tests

Matt

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

No, I said already the server has changed.

Manchester (Xilo) no longer points to 91.199.78.82, it now points to 31.193.12.35. I stated this clearly in my previous post:

I know; that's why I deliberately repeated the traceroute to the IP address you gave (rather than the resolved name for their Manchester speedtest server, or 31.193.12.35).
I was trying to replicate the times you saw (albeit with slightly different routing) and did, indeed, do that (showing around 3ms difference between a server you've already stated is definitely in London and 91.199.78.82 (where ever that IP is, it's likely not to have moved far, as the timings are pretty much the same).

There wouldn't have been a lot of point me doing a traceroute to a server now based in Manchester, to prove (either way) the timings from London to somewhere near London (the point being to see how far away, in terms of typical commercial traffic, that server is likely to be from - I guess - the north-east end of Docklands), and at 3ms (give or take) it's fairly close to London - most likely either Maidenhead or Milton Keynes (if, indeed, it's still a Xilo server at 91.199.78.82).

Given the timings you've mentioned from London to Manchester (6-8ms), 91.199.78.82 is unlikely to be more than 100km from Docklands (Maidenhead and MK are both within that distance).

It all goes back to a comment I posted a while back (something along the lines of "how come my ping to Manchester is 10ms, yet pings to MK - around 30 miles away - are 26ms, unless BT is doing some weird-ass routing, or the Manchester server isn't in Manchester").
EDIT: Or how come pings to Manchester are the same as to Coventry (with Coventry less than 30 miles up the road and Manchester something like 130 miles away - does data really go 100 miles in zero ms).
EDIT2: Another oddity - Paris 10ms, Manchester 10ms, London 26ms (surely the Paris data goes through London on its way out of the country).

Edited by adebov (Wed 09-May-12 00:36:43)

In reply to a post by adebov:

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

No, I said already the server has changed.

Manchester (Xilo) no longer points to 91.199.78.82, it now points to 31.193.12.35. I stated this clearly in my previous post:

I know; that's why I deliberately repeated the traceroute to the IP address you gave (rather than the resolved name for their Manchester speedtest server, or 31.193.12.35).
I was trying to replicate the times you saw (albeit with slightly different routing) and did, indeed, do that (showing around 3ms difference between a server you've already stated is definitely in London and 91.199.78.82 (where ever that IP is, it's likely not to have moved far, as the timings are pretty much the same).

There wouldn't have been a lot of point me doing a traceroute to a server now based in Manchester, to prove (either way) the timings from London to somewhere near London (the point being to see how far away, in terms of typical commercial traffic, that server is likely to be from - I guess - the north-east end of Docklands), and at 3ms (give or take) it's fairly close to London - most likely either Maidenhead or Milton Keynes (if, indeed, it's still a Xilo server at 91.199.78.82).

Given the timings you've mentioned from London to Manchester (6-8ms), 91.199.78.82 is unlikely to be more than 100km from Docklands (Maidenhead and MK are both within that distance).

OK - I misunderstood what you were getting at. Sorry. It appears we're in general agreement - 91.199.78.82 is not in Manchester, and as it resolves to speedtest.xilo.net it's almost certainly another Xilo server. Traceroutes show traffic going via mhd.uk.as44574.net so one can reasonably assume mhd stands for Maidenhead so it's probably the Maidenhead server.

It all goes back to a comment I posted a while back (something along the lines of "how come my ping to Manchester is 10ms, yet pings to MK - around 30 miles away - are 26ms, unless BT is doing some weird-ass routing, or the Manchester server isn't in Manchester").
EDIT: Or how come pings to Manchester are the same as to Coventry (with Coventry less than 30 miles up the road and Manchester something like 130 miles away - does data really go 100 miles in zero ms).
EDIT2: Another oddity - Paris 10ms, Manchester 10ms, London 26ms (surely the Paris data goes through London on its way out of the country).

This is why we need to use traceroutes (and several of them) to accurately determine latency and paths, rather than just relying on the Speedtest.net flash app. Web based tests can be highly inaccurate, and some Speedtest.net servers show consistently higher or lower pings than actual.

Right now, Manchester seems to be one of them - these speedtests show my ping to be 9ms 8ms and 9ms again while the real ping is 12ms:

C:\Users\Administrator>ping 31.193.12.35

Pinging 31.193.12.35 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 31.193.12.35: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=58
Reply from 31.193.12.35: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=58
Reply from 31.193.12.35: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=58
Reply from 31.193.12.35: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=58

Ping statistics for 31.193.12.35:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 12ms, Maximum = 12ms, Average = 12ms

C:\Users\Administrator>hrping -s 25 -n 100 -q 31.193.12.35
This is hrPING v3.13 by cFos Software GmbH -- http://www.cfos.de

Source address is 0.0.0.0; using ICMP echo-request
Pinging 31.193.12.35
with 32 bytes data (60 bytes IP):


Statistics for 31.193.12.35:
Packets: sent=100, rcvd=100, error=0, lost=0 (0.0% loss) in 2.487892 sec
RTTs of replies in ms: min/avg/max/dev: 11.021 / 12.630 / 19.763 / 0.993
Bandwidth in kb/sec: sent=2.411, rcvd=2.411

Similarly on my home connection Speedtest says 37ms while command line ping shows a little over 40:

C:\Users\Administrator>hrping -s 10 -n 100 -w 1000 -q 31.193.12.35
This is hrPING v3.13 by cFos Software GmbH -- http://www.cfos.de

Source address is 10.1.1.1; using ICMP echo-request
Pinging 31.193.12.35
with 32 bytes data (60 bytes IP):


Statistics for 31.193.12.35:
Packets: sent=100, rcvd=100, error=0, lost=0 (0.0% loss) in 1.030660 sec

RTTs of replies in ms: min/avg/max/dev: 39.680 / 40.352 / 41.466 / 0.413

Bandwidth in kb/sec: sent=5.821, rcvd=5.821

London (Namesco) is a server that does the opposite - with web results always showing much higher pings than actual - 66ms 68ms and 67ms while the real pings is actually 34ms:

Statistics for gonzales.namesco.net:
Packets: sent=100, rcvd=98, error=0, lost=2 (2.0% loss) in 49.534376 sec

RTTs of replies in ms: min/avg/max/dev: 33.888 / 34.345 / 43.325 / 1.020

So my real ping to the London server is 34ms but Speedtest.net says 68ms
and my real ping to the Manchester server is 40ms but Speedtest.net says 37ms.

Basically, Speedtest.net web results for pings are inaccurate, and can be much higher or lower than the real result.

Course, there is things like weird routing as well. The Preston server for example is hosted on Virgin Media's network, so anyone on VM near Preston will get a low ping - but someone on BT in Preston will get a higher one as their traffic goes via London and back again.

Also, shorter/longer distance does not necessaries mean shorter/longer pings. On VM for example, it takes longer to get from London to Birmingham than it takes to get from London to Manchester. The Birmingham link takes 8ms RTT, but Manchester is only 6ms. So people in Coventry (on VM) get a higher ping to London (1ms to Birmingham + 8ms to London) than someone in Manchester (6ms).

A worse example, Virgin Media also have a "direct" fibre link from Manchester to Amsterdam - 500km as the crow flies - with a round trip time (ping) of about 26ms.
But on BT, Manchester to London then London to Amsterdam takes 15ms total, and that's 625km. 25% longer distance, but still 40% lower latency. That's an extreme case though, VM's Manc => Ams link is exceptionally slow as far as modern networks go


And once recently a bad route caused traffic to France to go via New Jersey and Amsterdam. It happens all the time - and traceroutes will help you figure out how and why.

So anyway
1) Speedtest.net results can be completely whack
2) Longer distance does not necessarily equate to higher ping (but there are physical limits)
3) The shortest or most obvious route is often not the one your data actually uses.

Edited by deleted (Wed 09-May-12 01:31:20)

The locations are a bit odd, sometimes There is one server in the UK, actually hosted in Germany and there was another at OVH, but that has vanished.

Matt

Yeah, so general rules of thumb: -
1. Take no notice of where Speedtest.net says the server is located.
2. Ignore the pings (there are lot of hops on the way between here and any of the speedtest servers, so 10ms seems unlikely for any of them - to get through, say, 16 hops and a round-trip, even direct route, of 300 miles seems quite an achievement at 10ms).
3. Assume your ISP will be routing your data from Oxfordshire to Manchester, via the Outer Hebrides.

And to confirm the effect routing has;

Pinging 31.193.12.35 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 31.193.12.35: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=49
Reply from 31.193.12.35: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=49
Reply from 31.193.12.35: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=49
Reply from 31.193.12.35: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=49

Ping statistics for 31.193.12.35:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 20ms, Maximum = 20ms, Average = 20ms

Yours is 12ms.

Pinging gonzales.namesco.net [85.233.160.167] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 85.233.160.167: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=51
Reply from 85.233.160.167: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=51
Reply from 85.233.160.167: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=51
Reply from 85.233.160.167: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=51

Ping statistics for 85.233.160.167:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 12ms, Maximum = 15ms, Average = 13ms

Yours is 34ms (my ping according to Speedtest.net is 10ms - it seems Speedtest.net only ever gives two ping results for me - 10ms and 26ms - they can't all be that!).

I get 5, 15 (correct), or 25. Usually the 25 arises on the auto-server choice based on ping !

I say the 15 is correct because on IDNet it was a rock solid 13ms on tests and tbb BQM, and tbb BQM showed 15ms on Plusnet when I tried it a couple of times. (It's a dynamic IP so I had to set up, run for a while, then delete).

5ms is impossible for here.

Good results
Was changed to the 80mb on wednesday after the estimate of 60 mb glad with the results

false

Edited by deleted (Fri 11-May-12 20:24:09)

lol the ping sucks on infinity broadband mine is 15ms.. why im saying this, i was on sky copper broadband my ping was 5ms it was perfect for online gaming infinty isnt all that...

Edited by deleted (Wed 16-May-12 01:25:31)