Then you are testing the speed of your Internet connection.

I give up.

In reply to a post by hk11:

I understand the maximum. It should be 10Mbps actually, but I think Vodafone say 9 as there is some sort of Ofcom rule saying they can't quote speeds above what they provide.

Uh, its a bit complicated.

Given the max is 40, well 36 is quoted, download and I get near or even above this, I don't understand why I only get a third of the upload (9 or 10Mbps).

There are two products from Openreach that the ISP can purchase, the 40/10 service or the 80/20 service. They are both "up-to" these speeds, depending on the quality of the wire in the ground from the green box to your home, and the quality of the wiring in your home (number of extensions, etc).

The 40/10 service is the speed the router is connected to the green box at, but there are technical overheads (how computers work) that reduce the data throughput that you can get.The ASA and Ofcom agreed the current limits on ISP marketing.

With a laptop or desktop connected by Ethernet to a router on a 40/10 service, assuming a good and short copper line then the maximum speeds you can get is 36 download and 9 upload in megabits per second (Mbps)

Many copper lines in the street are not good quality and as you have a very expensive box at the Openreach end, and a £50 router at the home end, often the download speed is close to the quoted, but the upload speed is less good. This is why people want "full fibre" or "cable" instead of copper wires in the street, as there is less variability.

Edit - you are on an FTTP service, so you get the 40/10 speeds at ANY distance. The overheads of the TCP/IP packets and the PPPoE encapsulation is why the usable throughput of 36/9 is permitted to be advertised.

It's obviously not an iPad limitation given the quoted 144Mbps, even if we allow for all sorts of veriables.

This 144 is not guaranteed, if you don't live in the middle of the country there are other radio transmissions around you (coming through your walls) that can interfere with the WiFi speeds. This is why people upgrade WiFi technologies to get more total capacity so that with interference they get more usable throughput.

In your case, without an Ethernet adaptor for your iPad, or a laptop/desktop connected by Ethernet, you cannot reliably test this.

For example at home I have Virgin Media's service which is 250 down and 20 up. On my 3 year old desktop PC I can go to speedtest.net in my Firefox web browser and see speeds of 240 download and 19 upload. This is good. On a 5 year old Android phone connected by WiFi standing only 2 metres from my router I can only get 180 download and 6 upload.

Can you borrow a laptop or something with an Ethernet connection?

Which iPad do you have?

Edited by jchamier (Wed 09-Aug-23 19:58:58)

The OP is on a 40/10 FTTP service, so no copper line length involved. Just very poor Wi-Fi on an Ipad.

From everything the OP has said it is not a WiFi problem. If he gets 36Mbs download then he should expect near to 9 upload (although on my connection, with similar limits, I get 32 down and only 5 up; but that doesn’t cause me any problems). That points to an ISP problem.

Assuming that this upload speed is causing problems, and we’re not just obsessing about speed tests, the OP should contact his ISP’s customer support. Presumably he’s done the obvious and powered the router off and on again.

In reply to a post by Realalemadrid:

The OP is on a 40/10 FTTP service, so no copper line length involved. Just very poor Wi-Fi on an Ipad.

Ugh, I’d missed it was FTTP. Yes, an iPad before the Air 1 (which was 2007) is a pretty useless device to do speed testing on. The CPU can’t keep up with the throughput.

Thanks for the explanation of 80/20 and 40/10. I have found this all out recently as no one seems to offer the 40/10 FTTP service I am on now; hence my ordering the 80/20 one.

Surprised you mention copper as that is pretty much redundant round here, although some areas do still offer FTTC which is a mixture of copper and fibre, so ....

Back on topic: I have just done a couple of speed tests using an ancient iMac on both wifi and ethernet and got pretty much the 36/9 so my original question still remains. Why am I still only getting 36/3 on my iPads?

In reply to a post by hk11:

Surprised you mention copper as that is pretty much redundant round here, although some areas do still offer FTTC which is a mixture of copper and fibre, so ....

Thinkbroadband’s news pages show that Openreach has only reached about 45% of the UK built up area yet. A LOT of the country still has only copper from Openreach. Many cities and towns. Some are lucky to have an alternate network (such as Zzooomm or CityFibre) but not many yet.

Back on topic: I have just done a couple of speed tests using an ancient iMac on both wifi and ethernet and got pretty much the 36/9 so my original question still remains. Why am I still only getting 36/3 on my iPads?

The iPad is not capable of sending any faster then. That your iMac can get the full speed your ISP quotes means there is nothing wrong with your system.

Unlike a computer (iMac, MacBook, etc) the iPad is based on mobile phone technology, but made physically larger. For price and battery life reasons the choices made of the hardware inside are to a performance for price.

As the years go by the newer hardware goes faster for similar price. The original 2010 iPad was incredibly slow on the network, but people still loved it, even without a camera to do video calls. iPad 2 was a big seller with the added video camera. The Air models were then faster again, and now Apple has three ranges:
* Entry level iPad (ver 9 and ver 10 on sale)
* Mid range iPad - iPad Air gen 4 or gen 5
* High end iPad - iPad Pro 11” or iPad Pro 12.9”

The mid range and high end iPads include the CPU from the new Macbooks for speed reasons.

Then you don’t really have a problem. I can’t imagine that you need to upload large amounts of data from an ancient iPad.

45% eh. It's a pity folk have no choice. There's me on a tiny island that was quite happy with ADSL that is being forced onto full fibre and yet a friend in Liverpool that is stuck on ADSL but would love fibre, so falls into the other 55%.

I guess you are right about the iPad. Always been happy with mine, but wouldn't buy another due to Apple's continually making old hardware redundant. I'd love something with a bigger screen than my iPhone though. Are the £80 tablets worth looking at?

Still don't understand the difference between the advertised 144Mbps when the iPad is throttled at around 3Mbps, but we will see what happens when it gets offered 20Mbps next week. I am assuming that 3Mbps still won't be exceeded?

As an aside I have just found out the lack of an option for attachments when posting to Plusnet Community was that the iPads weren't using desktop mode. I always used to request desktop mode having been used to working on a PC, but I must admit to not having requested that for ages.

Edited by hk11 (Wed 09-Aug-23 20:37:47)

In reply to a post by hk11:

I have just done a couple of speed tests using an ancient iMac on both wifi and ethernet and got pretty much the 36/9

Hooray

9th December 2022 => 9th August 2023 a total of 9 months but at last you have the information that shows there is nothing wrong with your Vodafone FTTP service

I hope you will be calling Vodafone to apologise.

Edited by deleted (Wed 09-Aug-23 22:21:19)