Just Copy&Paste and + for the speedtest:
Link to this result:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

They were not using BQM but another ping tool

Hi,
I am the first to admit that I get confused with all these different speed checkers. I have had fibre since August 2013 and I'm still not sure what speed I'm getting. I've been checking numerous sites and get a variety speeds from them. I recently found thinkbroadband but I'm still confused. The most recent result on this site is shown here:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

There are various figures here and I'm not sure which is my actual speed. The reason I say this is that I have also been downloading a 200MB file daily from this site since 22/01/14. My Sky router says I'm connected at 40Mbps so a 200MB file should take 40 seconds to download. The time taken has been as low as 75 seconds or as high as 118 seconds giving me a fastest speed of 21.33 Mbps or a slowest speed of 13.56 Mbps (files have been downloaded at various times of the day). This is a lot lower than the HTTP speeds on the thinkbroadband speedtest results.

A simple explanation as well as any advice will be very, very welcome.

If you are running windows xp your rwin value is probably too small and needs tweaking

How to tweak will leave those on a keyboard rather than phone to answer

Re MrSaffron's post:-

DrTCP
or
TCP Optimizer.

One of them has an automatic tweaking option, so I preferred it as working things out is hard. I think it was TCP Optimizer. Whichever it is, it also had a "Save current settings" option as well in case you wanted to revert it.

Thanks for the replies.

I tried TCP Optimizer and the guide to using it on SpeedGuide.net. I tried to read the whole document but it is way above my level of understanding. Luckily there is a quick 4 step guide in "section 2. Using the program". Before trying this, I downloaded a 200MB file from thinkbroadband.com and it took 78 seconds giving me a speed of 20.513Mbps. After using the 4 step guide and rebooting, I downloaded another file which also took 78 seconds. So no difference whatsoever.

I also ran a speed test on this site and the burst http x 6 speed is 40.1 Mbps even though Sky has it capped at 40 Mbps.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

I was hoping for a simple explanation for all this but it looks like there isn't one.

I really do appreciate the replies I've had but I'm no further forward in understanding the difference between the speed test results and file download results. Think I'll try and see if there is a book called Broadband for Dummies!

Thanks anyway.

The tbbx1 looks more like congestion, and without giving detail the tbbx6 by requesting the data multiple times can work around around congestion.

Most testers provide one figure so you are oblivious to many things. A handful report a figure that would be not dissimilar to the burst figure.

Difference between the burst and average, on a connection where software and connection are behaving they should be almost the same. In your case burst looks to have been affected probably by AV/firewall software.

So currently result looks like some congestion on the Sky network

There is a broadband for dummies, but this sort of stuff is invariably missed out as they devote pages to bits and Bytes, url, hyperlink etc