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