In reply to a post by uno:

Might be an idea to link a speedtest in to the results for some accuracy

Mat

Don't really see the point- most FTTC users are limited by where they are rather than who they're with.

That's what I was getting at. If orly sets off an automatic speed test, how does that use the user's connection rather than his own, and if it does use the user's connection goodness knows what may be running on it simultaneously.

Thinks - I'm very confused by this idea.

I never said it would start the test automatically.. I said it could tally any results to a speedtest result that the survey participant could take at the time.

I think you've over complicated this in your mind when its actually quite simple on a testing basis.

Matt

In reply to a post by uno:

Might be an idea to link a speedtest in to the results for some accuracy

Mat

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1233545824.png
http://speedtest.net/result/1208090695.png
http://speedtest.net/result/1194556394.png

A couple of random tests + 1 for tonight

Survey duly filled in .

how do you mean

Early days in this version of the survey but seems to be finding some interesting results.

The ISP front is as you were...BT out in the lead.

Only a few dozen responses so far but less than half receive/get 35Mbit or more from their connection. About a quarter say they get under 20Mbit - less than half the headline speeds. Whether people are synced at 40Mbit doesn't really matter if they don't receive it.

For uploads, if we assume anyone voting 2Mbit or less is actually on a 2Mbit product, then just over half of those left get 8Mbit or more - ie top whack. A slightly better performance.

If you have FTTC and haven't voted yet, please do. It literally takes 5 seconds.

Edited by orly (Sun 03-Apr-11 18:26:54)

In reply to a post by orly:

Whether people are synced at 40Mbit doesn't really matter if they don't receive it.

But your survey won't be able to work this out - it only asks for one downlink speed, rather than both the download speed *and* the IP Profile (in the absense of knowing the sync speed).

Actually, the page isn't clear about whether you are asking for the actual download/upload speed, or the value from the IP profile. I know you ask people to perform a speedtest, but that action is the only way to find out either bit of information.

Would it be useful to collect both?

It doesn't try to work out the sync speed.

Simply it asks you to do a speedtest and/or enter the info if you know it. Most users this early, and reading this forum, are knowledgeable enough to find out and understand their speed.

Getting IP Profiles and sync rates is more cumbersome or nearly impossible so it would complicate matters too much and simplicity is what I was going for.

My point was that while FTTC often results in big speed increases, it seems that a minority are reaching the top speeds at this stage. If you have a speedtest over 35Mbit, it's a safe bet you're on a high sync speed too. Obviously you could be synced at the full 40mbit (or 38.7 or whatever is max) and still get a slower speedtest but the point still stands. If you had a gigabit connection and still only got 25Mbit what's the point of calling it a gigabit connection?

As I've mentioned it's all subjective and interpretation rather than 100% accurate. I find it interesting that thus far less than half are reporting they get towards the top end. Given the charts we've all seen showing VDSL2 supposedly capable of handing out 40Mbit up to about 1KM do we infer that ISPs on the whole aren't up to it or that most people live quite a bit further from their cabinets than they think due to roundabout cable routes?

Consider a news post on this site that suggests that only 12% of lines are further than this 1KM distance from the cabinet. I'd have hoped the data coming back to me would be closer to this if it was true. So are speedtests duff, equipment not good enough, ISPs slower most of the time or people running other stuff in the background when testing?

Hopefully as more people take a minute to complete the survey we can all get more data to work with. Subjective of course, but not totally invalid.

BTW, Ofcom's survey from Nov/Dec 2010 includes FTTC data.

Link: Ofcom Summary
Media Slides: PDF

PDF Pages 10,11 and 16,17 show their average speeds (slides are numbered 9, 10 and 15,16).

Even there, Ofcom had nothing to try to correlate actual download speed vs IP Profile (or Sync Speed).

However, Page 8 (slide 7) has a *great* graph of actual download speeds vs exchange distance. Even allowing for the fact that the distances are estimates (so some are a crock of xxxx), the results how that a lot of people are *way* off the curve you'd expect.