In reply to a post by joemardo1:

Hi folks,

For a good number of years now I have used the Speedtest on Thinkbroadband site, but was always a bit skeptical of the results.

I am on full fibre 500 down with BT on a wired connection from ONT to Desktop, just ran a Thinkbroadband speed test and also one from Ookle and got the following results, which one do I trust?

Thanks.
[img]https://i.postimg.cc/r0Spdbqd/st1.jpg[/img]"]speedtest


[img]https://i.postimg.cc/xNn1LRd6/st2.jpg[/img]"]Speedtest 2

I receive very similar results, using the Ookla app. https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/d/9284e0e0-74ec-...

However, I have discovered that the choice of browser is also significant. This is the result of a TBB speedtest with Microsoft Edge on a Windows 11 computer, with a wired connection to the router.
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/17247756714... .

But using Firefox on the same computer, the results of the TBB speedtest are comparable to Ookla.
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/17247759695...

In reply to a post by joemardo1:

I am on full fibre 500 down with BT on a wired connection from ONT to Desktop, just ran a Thinkbroadband speed test and also one from Ookle and got the following results, which one do I trust?

Ookla (speedtest.net) is paid for by ISPs, and is designed to make your ISP look good. In particular it has a high level of concurrency (multiple TCP streams in parallel) which papers over low-level packet loss.

I always use samknows speedtest!
http://www.broadbandperformance.co.uk/

Edited by adslmax (Tue 27-Aug-24 22:00:44)

It's worth noting this thread died in May, until presumably being woken up by a spam post that has been removed.

I've been using it for many, many years and it has proven itself to be very accurate. That should however always be taken under the advisement that it only measures the single route between you and their servers. It's like measuring the journey time between Plymouth and London. Interesting up to a point but if the journey you really want is Plymouth to Manchester it might not mean as much.

It is best used as a benchmark over time but where it really excels is comparing single to multi-threaded results. If those two are significantly at variance then something is wrong somewhere.

In reply to a post by Colinh58:

So, I just tried that as min 1, max 1 and I get 1.7Gbs
Trying min 1 and max 16 gives me same result
Even more confused now

Suggests you are with a very good ISP. On an ideal network there should be no difference between single- and multi- threaded tests. In practice single-threaded will show more variability but the average of the two should be very similar.

If multi-threaded is significantly faster than single-threaded it suggests congestion or traffic shaping.