speed test education

I do not have a speed problem but I am just looking for reasons why speed tests give different readings.
I have 900Mbs to the router but using other speed tests can get anything fron 300 Mbs to 900Mbs depending on the tester. Sometimes if I change server on the test site the speed sometimes rises.

It depends on more than just your link. If your link can do 900,but somewhere along the route between the speedtest server and you, speeds are limited to 300, then 300 is all you will see.

In reply to a post by merrymouse:

I do not have a speed problem but I am just looking for reasons why speed tests give different readings.
I have 900Mbs to the router but using other speed tests can get anything fron 300 Mbs to 900Mbs depending on the tester. Sometimes if I change server on the test site the speed sometimes rises.

Are you seeing differences on *our tester* between times, or various testers?

Computer networks are complicated and different routes can have different speeds. It's much like a road network - the time to get to the centre of London 60 miles away can be different to the time it takes to get the centre of Birmingham 60 miles away.

And unless you frequently access data stored in the same location as the speed test server the throughput might have little bearing on what you experience in normal use.

The value of speed tests is in sticking to one long term so that you can see any unusual results and even better use multiple test servers so that you can tell if a slowdown is local to you (affects all speed tests) or specific to one particular route (only affects a couple of speed tests).

And if you're testing using a wireless connection take all results with a pinch of salt.

Edited by Andrue (Wed 12-Aug-26 17:11:04)

Sorry a bit late in reply. Using thinkbroadband speed test I get between 300-400 download most times I test. On rare occasions I have got 800 down.

Thank you for your reply. I learned a long time ago(off this forum which I read every day) that WIFI is not the way to test. If I go to a server which shows 800-900 download does my browsing stay on the server?

@merrymouse,

IMHO, you should download a command line speedtest from Ookla. This is how I test my connection from a USB 3.0 Gigabit Ethernet adapter (as my laptop doesn't have an onboard ethernet port). I have always managed to obtain > 900 Mb/sec connection from the command line (or Terminal as I have Linux Mint installed on my laptop), whereas when I test from the browser I get significantly lower speeds < 400 Mb/sec, which is quite a difference!

HTH,

Thanks for reply which was interesting. I tried a few different browsers today and yes and few different results.I am learning more lol.

In reply to a post by merrymouse:

Sorry a bit late in reply. Using thinkbroadband speed test I get between 300-400 download most times I test. On rare occasions I have got 800 down.

Can you try to download the test files here:
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/download

See how they compare to speed test.

We did identify some issues which seemed to affect some users on 1Gbps connections although those usually cause consistently slower tests.

seb

In reply to a post by merrymouse:

Thank you for your reply. I learned a long time ago(off this forum which I read every day) that WIFI is not the way to test. If I go to a server which shows 800-900 download does my browsing stay on the server?

No.

Again, think of it like timing a car journey. Just because you drive from your house to London Euston in an hour doesn't mean that you will then also be able to drive from your house to Edinburgh Zoo in an hour.

Speed tests tell you the rate at which you can exchange data with a specific computer on the world's internet at that time. How relevant that is to what you actually want to do depends on many factors. The internet is a lot like a road network and data rates vary the same as travel times can vary.

And even the destinations can vary. Just because a speed tester can handle high speeds doesn't mean a website can. In fact I'd imagine some websites deliberately throttle individual connections to prevent individual users from overloading the server.

Edited by Andrue (Fri 14-Aug-26 18:56:47)

In reply to a post by merrymouse:

Sorry a bit late in reply. Using thinkbroadband speed test I get between 300-400 download most times I test. On rare occasions I have got 800 down.

Based on my many years of experience of using the TBB speed test that suggests a problem of some kind. It's very rare for this site to ever not indicate the maximum speed of my connection and when it has happened it's always been the result of a fault somewhere.

Edited by Andrue (Fri 14-Aug-26 19:01:40)

On really fast connections, my personal experience is that the TBB won’t keep pace. But I’m talking well north of 5 Gbps.

It’s a pretty good analogy. Like having disposal to a Bugatti Veyron and expecting to be able to hit 250 mph everywhere / any and every time. Maybe on the straight section of an empty autobahn, point-to-point, but definitely not across countries with lots of traffic, variable speed limits and roadworks 😂

It’s why most speed testers try pointing you to the nearest node.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/17750150078...

8 Gbps fast enough?

Ah now that’s a lot more like it. You guys must’ve got the spanners out under the bonnet! Previously (admittedly more than a year ago) I struggled to get more than 3-4 Gbps through.