In reply to a post by kasg:

In my case it was easy - with the box (I presume that's what you meant by "server") in circuit, speeds were drastically reduced; with it bypassed they were back to normal. Your situation seems more complex, but if you just bypass the box for a while (maybe a day or two) and see whether the effect continues, you should have a pretty good idea whether it has anything to do with it.

Depends how you have it connected.

Mine is plugged in to a port on my router. Its on a 100megabit device (the older Cisco/Linksys unit) and so its possible if i was doing a maxed out download for long enough that I would get poor results. Since I hardly ever do that, its reports seem very consistent with those I get from other speed test sites such as thinkbroadband. I find the other reports quite interesting.

I don't think there is any capacity issue at the samknows end, as I assumed (?) the box would be programmed to use a lot of different sites, to find out how good an ISP is generally, not how good an ISP is at getting to server X.

Obviously the method is confidential, but the trial is open for new panel members.

In reply to a post by DRW:

Thanks for your comments, the Samknows box (in fact all the boxes in the local network) were switched off for an hour in the last 10 days or so as we were having thunderstorms and I disconnect from the telephone line and the power supply when storms occur.

I never turn off openreach modem on the bt master socket during thunderstorms as it still connection ongoing since February. We had about three or four times storms and it doesan't affect it.

Edited by adslmax (Sat 07-Jun-14 10:40:00)

I have had one thunder strike (albeit many years ago) the strike was seen to follow along the telephone cable to the house. Fortunately we only lost a burglar alarm PIR sensor. This was long before the days of modems and internet.

Ever since I have been doubly cautious over the potential damage a thunder strike could cause to the various electronic "toys" in the house.
AT the first sign of a thunder rumble, the computers are all powered off, Modems disconnected from the telephone lines, aerial leads removed, Hifi disconnected from the mains.


Of course you could argue that lightning does not strike twice. <g>

In reply to a post by DRW:

the strike was seen to follow along the telephone cable to the house.

Thankfully all my wires are underground. I should disconnect the TV antenna and Sky Dish cables though, but never do !