Tbb Flash speedtester

Some of you may be aware of my occasional whinges in TTTS about the tbb Flash-based speedtester only returning ~12Mbps download instead of the ~65Mbps I get with other Flash speedtesters (eg speedtest.net) and Java-based testers.

I discovered something by accident... ignoring all the blind alleys I went down, if I wait until the download starts then use the mouse or trackpad to scroll the browser window up and down as fast as I can then I can see the "meter" go towards full scale and I get results approaching reasonable. The faster I can scroll it the faster the speedtest gets! It's only if I leave the display stationary that I get rubbish results.

This happens with both IPv4 and IPv6 tests, on the iMac (2560 x 1440, 32-bit colour) and the MacBook (1280 x 800, 32-bit colour), both with default drivers/profiles, both my usual browsers (Opera and Safari) and whether I've got any other applications running or not. OS is Snow Leopard, all updates applied, Flash is latest version.

I've looked at everything related to video and Flash that I can think of, but there's not much you can adjust on a Mac.

Anybody got any ideas, because I'm comprehensively baffled


Flash speedtest is here, for anyone who doesn't know it.

I intentionally haven't installed Flash on my MBP - but I wonder if this effect happens on all browsers or just Safari ?

As I said it also happens on Opera, but I'm sure other Mac users have reported it giving the same speeds as the Java test. Could be wrong on that, anyone care to comment?

I've just discovered an old version of Camino, updated it and that gives better results- about 35Mbps, but still only about half what it should really be. It also slows down if you scroll the window up and down fast enough, which is more like what I would expect!

edit- speedtest.net in Camino gives the answers I'd expect: ~65Mbps.

But it won't run the Java test at all, doesn't even bring up the Java screen (even after I remembered to enable it ). Not too worried, I seldom use Camino.

I'm beginning to think there's something weird about my setup, but I have absolutely zero idea what it might be, where to look next or how I managed to break it on both the iMac and the MacBook

Edited by billford (Mon 30-Apr-12 20:07:30)

It just doesn't work. I gave up trying it some months ago.

It sounds like mouse/trackpad events are interfering with a timing loop in the flash code.

Ah right, at least I'm not the only one!

Thanks, that's reassured me quite a bit

In reply to a post by micksharpe:

It sounds like mouse/trackpad events are interfering with a timing loop in the flash code.

That sounds reasonable, but it's odd that it speeds Opera and Safari up and slows Camino down

But then, the innards of a Mac are way out of my pay band.

Carl- just a thought- are you still using Snow Leopard or have you upgraded (if that's the right word ) to Lion?

That's strange. It works fine for me (Safari on Lion) and gives the same results as the Jave speed tester.

Weird... I'm certainly not going to install Lion just for the sake of one speedtester.

I'll keep poking it to see if I can find something that makes it work

What are Apple going to do when they run out of big cats?

Good question

They got them in the wrong order anyway- the tiger is a much more powerful cat than the lion!

Bill, yes, I'm using Lion.

Thanks Carl.

So we appear to have one machine running Lion that works, another running Lion that doesn't and another running Snow Leopard that depends which browser is used... I'm beginning to think I should realise when I'm beaten

Exactly the same happening to me - Snow Leopard with Firefox and Safari. 12Mbps down (and 8-ish up) if the mouse is stationary, and 24 Mbps down if I scroll fast. In fact if you stop scrolling you can see the speed drop, and then pick up if you start scrolling again. My true down speed is about 37 Mbps. The upload is more or less correct.

I think it is a sort of game - see how fast you can scroll and get your speed to register!

OK, just tested it on a Lion machine with Firefox, and the same thing happens. However the speeds are higher on the Lion Mac - 15 - 25 Mbps stationary, and 33 ish with scrolling. Up speeds seem correct.

Pile of rubbish that speed tester, I reckon!

In reply to a post by Nutmeg:

I think it is a sort of game - see how fast you can scroll and get your speed to register!

I might mention that to Seb


But then again, perhaps I'd better not

Lion here too (10.7.3). Flash version 11,2,202,235 (bang up to date) and tried the same thing out on both Safari (Version 5.1.5 (7534.55.3) and Firefox (Version 12) with the same results:

Scrolling up/down fast improves the download speed and doesn't impact on the upload speed test results at all.

From (a hazy) memory, I never used the Flash test as it seemed totally erroneous anyhow (and this using my old Vista 32bit laptop).

My speeds for reference are normally 15778 Kbps down and 1111 Kbps up and are consistent using the Java based speed test.

The flash based test gave me 12 mbps down if mouse was idle and 16.2 mbps down if I went mad with the up/down scrolling. Interestingly, I couldn't improve on what is probably my actual connection throughput stats as I'm using ADSL2+ (Annex A) on a 24meg/1meg product from Be.

There was an online flash based game I once played, where I can just about recall, you could manipulate results in the same kind of way so I don't think it's a unique phenomenon to TBB. My own (uneducated) theory is it's got something to do with the graphics card. It'd be interesting to see if this issue is just Apple based or not (I suspect it isn't) and whether it's affected by the type and power of graphics card installed. Over to you Mr Bill!

In reply to a post by SPOOKish:

whether it's affected by the type and power of graphics card installed.

Well, the iMac has an ATI Radeon and the MacBook has an NVidia GeForce, but I suppose anything's possible

Over to you Mr Bill!

And passed rapidly on to John and Seb (They're aware of this thread).

Though it somewhat contradicts what I said earlier, I was wondering if the issue had anything to do with hardware graphics acceleration (open CL?). My macbook has an ATI card and the integrate Intel 3000 whatsits.

ATI Technologies Inc. -- ATI Radeon HD 6770M OpenGL Engine -- 2.1 ATI-7.18.11

Anyway, like you say. It's over to other people to sort! Hope they have fun finding out what's going on.