ThinkBroadband SpeedTest

I have had installed BT 900 FTTP. The speeds are not what I expected. The Openreach engineer tested the fibre junction dB just outside of my house then the dB at the ONT. Good reading of 15dB but he changed the ONT to be sure. He conferred with someone (at the exchange?) English Accent so probably not local. Initially we were using ThinkBroadband SpeedTest this gave a reading of 390 Mbps Down and 58.4 Mbps Up. The English voice said the ThinkBroadband SpeedTest doesn't work with a 1Gb connection! I knew this was wrong as I have seen in the forum users posting their test results using ThinkBroadband SpeedTest. One user had 690 Down.
He was advised to only use Fast.com speedtest. This showed 670Mbps Down It doesn't do Up.(Inverness to Glasgow)
Using OOKla we got 372 Mbps Down and 81 up (Inverness to TNP Ltd Manchester)
All tests done wired short CAT7 cable. and within a few minutes of each test.
I am finding all this confusing. I don't know if I am getting the 900 I paid for. Apparently they (BT) can see my Hub2 getting 930Mbps Down and 110 Up.
I would be grateful for a quick lesson on what is right and what is wrong.
Thank you.

You should test directly using the Ethernet port of the ONT cabled into your PC completely bypassing the BT hub. You will need to setup a PPPoE login with your BT login credentials on the PC to do this though. As this removes the BT hub from the equation when testing, it is the most direct and therefore the most reliable test possible.

It’s entirely possible, indeed quite probable, that there is an issue limiting speeds on your PC/device itself. Therefore if you have another machine with wired network connection, test again with that machine and compare. Also swap the patch lead for good measure. Folk buy Cat7 leads thinking they’re getting the best but in some cases it’s mostly marketing spin. A regular Cat5e, Cat6 or 6a lead will be ample.

If after doing that you are still seeing speeds not up to par, then it’s time to revert to BT to check that there hasn’t been a mistake with an incorrect speed profile that has been applied to your service (at the ONT level, not the SH2). But I think that’s doubtful given you have seen around 670 down and 58 up, albeit on different tests.

For info Fast.com will do upload speed tests as well. Once it shows you the result of the download speed test click "Show more info", it will then show Latency information and start testing upload speed too.

What are your PC specs,
Like CPU, RAM, and usage in tests if you know that as I know i struggle to get 940 on a 8th gen I3 with 8GB ram
as the processor maxes out when using some browsers so i download the speedtest app and it works a little better in that.
Anything lower than what i stated will be very unreliable as the PC i used to test only had the speedtest open so check out what task manager usage is that could hint to where the restriction is. as you have a BT hub samknows's website does state that you can use realspeed to run a speedtest to the hub so i would try that as well.

Thanks for your reply.
I have already tried direct from the ONT, it was actually worse. The login for BT is generic being [email protected] Password BT. Best obtainable was Fast.com 360 down 81 Up.
I only mentioned the CAT 7 to avoid the response that I may be using a poor cable. I have tried several short 2 metre cables all of good quality as did the engineer to eliminate the possibility of the cable being the problem. The Engineer asked for my profile to be checked. It was OK but reset to be sure.
I am coming around to the notion that my devices may be the limiting factor. I have 4 PCs and a laptop all Win 10PRO. All give varying speeds. The one with the best consistent speeds I cannot get to work directly from the ONT following the same procedure as all the others which do work directly from the ONT.

Thanks for your reply
I have several PCs The fastest Speedtestwise is i5 -6500 with 8gB ram..
The slowest by far Speedtestwise is Phenom II x6 (6 cores active) 1055T 3338MHz and 16GB Ram
I think the PCs are the limiting factor. but none of this explains the vast difference in the various speedtests between Fast.com, Thinkbroadband and Ookla. All were consistent when I had FTTC (51Mbps) So it would seem that 1GB connections don't play nicely with some (all?) Speedtesters. My BT Smart Hub2 is not RealSpeed enabled. I have applied for a Whitebox.

Edited by Rytenuff (Fri 09-Apr-21 17:43:26)

Try booting from an Ubuntu Live USB stick and doing a test with that.

Thanks for the heads up.

In reply to a post by Rytenuff:

Thanks for your reply.
I have already tried direct from the ONT, it was actually worse. The login for BT is generic being [email protected] Password BT. Best obtainable was Fast.com 360 down 81 Up.
I only mentioned the CAT 7 to avoid the response that I may be using a poor cable. I have tried several short 2 metre cables all of good quality as did the engineer to eliminate the possibility of the cable being the problem. The Engineer asked for my profile to be checked. It was OK but reset to be sure.
I am coming around to the notion that my devices may be the limiting factor. I have 4 PCs and a laptop all Win 10PRO. All give varying speeds. The one with the best consistent speeds I cannot get to work directly from the ONT following the same procedure as all the others which do work directly from the ONT.

The fact that testing at the ONT results in a worse test result, definitely indicates there is something afoot with the machine / the NIC / or the OS build you are testing with. This is because PPPoE requires a certain amount of CPU processing capability at the end-point device.

In the case where your PC is that acting as that device it is providing that capability. Therefore if the tests are near enough "like-for-like" (the same test app / remote sever etc) but the result is worse rather than better - then it indicates a machine issue. Therefore I'd be more inclined to think the problem is there rather than the network.

See if you can do a test as suggested above using bootable Linux.

I have applied for a Whitebox.

I would recommend trying to email them and explain your situation when i did Samknows sent me one as they only had a few left and because I knew that my area did not have many i mentioned it and showed them speedtest results which made them decide to send me one.

As i say if you don't ask you don't get (or not at least as quickly)

Your I5 should be able to handle it as I have run a test on gigabit connections with a I5 first gen and it worked to the speed I would expect. Can i ask have you tried software like Netstress between two pc's to check if your pc is the bottleneck as I know that's one of the first things I do