How to understand speed tests

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...
Over the last few days I have been getting these very poor test results from the TBB tool.
However, Speedtest.net results are full speed i.e. 150Mbps down and 10 Mbps up.
The Which speed test is almost identical to the Speedtest.net results.
Performance on my PC seems pretty normal and I can stream HD from the iPlayer without problem. The results above are from tests taken just after 8pm. I have tried the TBB test during off-peak times with no change.
What would account for the discrepancies, I wonder? Thanks for any explanation.

Nothing wrong at our end as people on other providers are hitting the speeds we expect to see, but Virgin Media does appear to be slow tonight

Suggests something up in the Virgin Media network or how its routing stuff to various sites.

Lots of video streams use CDN on the providers own network so immune to issues like this, and speed tests that select based on lowest latency may work around the current issues

Mine tests fine and it displays what I am getting on other speed tests.

Speed Test DOT net

TBB Speed Test

Both done after each other and have a couple of Mbits difference between them.

So for me the TBB Speed tests are working fine.

The only glitch that I have with TBB Speeds tests is that the latency sometimes says <0 ms which is wrong, so if anything that's the only issue I have.

ping speedtest4.thinkbroadband.com

Pinging speedtest4.thinkbroadband.com [80.249.107.221] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 80.249.107.221: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=54
Reply from 80.249.107.221: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=54
Reply from 80.249.107.221: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=54
Reply from 80.249.107.221: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=54

Ping statistics for 80.249.107.221:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 5ms, Maximum = 5ms, Average = 5ms

So I would of expected a latency close to that, but we are talking about the result of the speeds.

Paul

Edited by PaulKirby (Tue 07-Mar-17 12:15:31)

We have looked into issues for Virgin Media users and seems something is awry with the handover from Virgin Media to LINX and is affecting a number of services, including some speedtest.net testers depending on where they are located.

A draft news item is awaiting a comment from Virgin Media.

I was with VM for around 7 days in length last month. Erratic speedtests which were all over the place. I got out in the 14 days cooling off...

3rd experience with them, 3rd time the network has been poor on single threaded downloads.

I am convinced there is a wide spread issues as all 3 times I have been at different properties.

Well something didn't look right on the OP result due to his latency was rather highish.

TBH it looked to me at first glance that going by the latency and where the x1 test was low and the other being higher, that somebody on their connection was using the connection.

Because hammering the line can cause higher latency.

But it could be a routing issue, maybe the OP could do a tracert to speedtest4.thinkbroadband.com like the following:

tracert speedtest4.thinkbroadband.com

Tracing route to speedtest4.thinkbroadband.com [80.249.107.221]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  BTHUB [192.168.2.x]
  2     3 ms     3 ms     3 ms  217.32.x.x
  3     3 ms     3 ms     3 ms  217.32.x.x
  4     4 ms     4 ms     4 ms  217.32.147.234
  5     5 ms     4 ms     4 ms  213.120.178.67
  6     4 ms     4 ms     4 ms  217.41.168.107
  7     4 ms     4 ms     3 ms  acc1-10GigE-0-1-0-4.l-far.21cn-ipp.bt.net 
                                [109.159.249.70]
  8     4 ms     4 ms     4 ms  core3-te0-19-0-16.faraday.ukcore.bt.net 
                                [109.159.249.31]
  9     5 ms     5 ms     5 ms  213.121.193.191
 10     5 ms     5 ms     4 ms  linx-gw1.thn.ncuk.net [195.66.224.240]
 11     5 ms     5 ms     5 ms  ip107-221.rbsov.ncuk.net [80.249.107.221]

Trace complete.

As you can see with my connection its all about the same latency has a low hop count, which I think is good for BT

Paul

Agreed, my smug mates down the road from me that were able to get VM a year or two ago who loved to rub it in due to me being stuck on only ADSL at the time.

Anyway they are all suffering with very low speeds, one of them even went back to ADSL due to it was more stable and cheaper.

So yeah, VM has issues near me, yet a friend in Manchester has absolutely no issues with latency or speed and he always gets his max speed.

So I get it depends where you are and how many people move over to it.

Paul

Looking into the results for around 2 hours last night...

If its a user using their connection then it is the same for EVERY virgin media user we saw on Monday evening

This issue is in ADDITION to local congestion issues

Back to normal so far today...will update during the evening rush hour!

awaiting the news article I love it when VM are shown up like this for their antics.

Out of interest I just did a tracert as you mentioned:

Tracing route to speedtest4.thinkbroadband.com [80.249.107.221]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms routerlogin.net [192.168.0.1]
2 8 ms 8 ms 9 ms 10.11.156.1
3 11 ms 18 ms 9 ms bagu-core-2b-xe-233-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.252.244.69]
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 * * * Request timed out.
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 16 ms 21 ms 25 ms eislou2-ic-2-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.254.84.62]
11 34 ms 17 ms 16 ms linx-gw2.thdo.ncuk.net [195.66.236.240]
12 15 ms 15 ms 18 ms te2-1-9.star10g.bdr-rt1.thn.ncuk.net [80.249.97.18]
13 17 ms 27 ms 15 ms ip107-221.rbsov.ncuk.net [80.249.107.221]

Trace complete.

Well it looks ok, you can ignore hops 4 to 9 those servers are just not replying to pings.

How's your connection at the moment?

Paul

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

Holding up at 9pm........