I would say the opposite.

The biggest chew of bandwidth today is streaming, every streaming service I know of is single threaded, youtube, netflix, lovefilm, iplayer, 4od, itvplayer etc.

If you grab a file of github, chrome update, http download, again its single threaded.

Web browsing is multi threaded usually but that on its own doesnt really need bandwidth it just needs a clean connection, and ideally low latency.

Where the VM use case scenario is optimal for (only good with high # of threads) is perhaps torrents, newsgroup binary downloads, steam, battlenet and origin.

FTP is single threaded by default although some ftp clients can make it multi threaded providing what you downloading is split into different files, to download a single file on FTP via multi threading is possible but a bit of a hassle.

Email is also by nature single threaded per email account.

Play store downloads, single threaded.

Anything else?

If you look on the VM forum, around the time the new packages got introduced, some weird QoS implementation was introduced as well, presumably to allow VM to market these new speeds without paying for the upgrades required in their infrastructure, sure there will be upgrade work been done, but this fiddling will have made the upgrade work not so expensive. Bear in mind this comment is not backed up by proof, as VM have been silent when asked about it on their forums so no confirmation.

Edited by Chrysalis (Mon 29-Aug-16 16:27:03)

Care to post a link to one of our speed test results?

TBB speed test

TBB Speed test

Edited by deleted (Mon 29-Aug-16 23:00:32)

Streaming doesn't need much bandwidth so on a 200Mb or 300Mb connection it doesn't matter, from the point of view of performance, whether it is single or multi-thread. Similarly with FTP streaming. I use FTP from Livedrive cloud service to stream video through Kodi. My band width allows me so stream a 50Gb 3D video file seamlessly after a few seconds delay. (Naturally I have maximised cache in Kodi.) I don't know if Livedrive actively split files over FTP or SFTP or not. I wouldn't have thought so because Kodi would struggle to coordinate a video split multiple ways. (uTorrent seems to manage that though, I often stream a video file as it downloads from multiple seeds.) I certainly use my VM connection for torrents, the ultimate in multi-threading, using a good VPN server offshore for security. Download speeds of over 15MBs even via VPN server in Canada are quite common.

Anyway, I take your point about single thread versus multi-threaded applications. My twin teen boys use Steam, Origin and Battle net heavily, so I guess in our bubble multi-threading is perhaps the norm.

What surprises me is that my 300Mb connection, apparently, is effectively 120Mb or less over single threaded test regardless of time of day if the TBB test is anything to go by. What really puzzles me is that there is no noticeable difference between peak and off-peak times. This is a quiet suburb with large semis and detached properties with retired folk or average-sized families in them, not a contended area. I would expect a variation in speed test results over a 24 hour period. Perhaps there is something I am not understanding.

Edited by deleted (Mon 29-Aug-16 21:44:50)

congestion is not the only thing that can affect single threaded speeds, tcp buffer tuning and congestion control will also affect it.

What OS are you running the speedtester on?

You appear to have missed that the the speed test shows single and multiple thread at similar speeds, but as that is the older flash based test and flash versions are morphing with all the security threats all the time there can be the odd issue, so can you run http://labs.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest and also https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest and post the results from both.

The last time Ofcom released its SamKnows results there was a note about a complaint from Virgin Media that the download test of that was not showing their top speeds. The SamKnows boxes at that time used a three thread download test, guessing they'll being doing to 6 or more to give higher speed but hopefully retain the lower more congestion sensitive version.

The difference between 1 thread and six can be seen in these recent tests
http://tbb.st/1472499159482015655
http://tbb.st/1472481446250852455
http://tbb.st/1472481350556651055

A sample test from flash test user
http://tbb.st/147248579818632990092

None of this visible on most other speed testers since they don't show the throughput graphs with a proper scale and do not do single versus multiple thread testing.

TBB Speed test (Labs HTTPS)

TBB speedtest (Labs HTTP)

TBB Speed test (Old Flash)

TBB speed test LABS HTTPS 8.55 am

My tests on the old flash test don't show that much difference between single thread and multi-thread? Is that so?

Not a massive difference between the two Labs tests either? 30Mb difference isn't great in the context of a possible 300Mb.

Neither test shows anything like my actual speed.

Edited by deleted (Tue 30-Aug-16 08:56:02)

Windows 10

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

every streaming service I know of is single threaded, youtube, netflix, lovefilm, iplayer, 4od, itvplayer etc.

Not true for Netflix and Amazon, can you post your test results?

I know you asked Chrysalis but I'm not sure if the Netflix speed tests will show much up. I can confirm that the Amazon speed test is multi-thread, not sure about their video output. I don't know where their test servers are, but I only got a princely 13.5Mb off them. Netflix say they download files from a variety of servers for their test. I got 120Mb off them. Again I don't know where their test servers are.

Anyway, outfits like Amazon and Netflix set up their speed tests to make their connection to you look real good.