TBB Download

On the Thinkbroadband speedtest: What is TBB Download and is is ours capped around 500 Mbps?

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/16920031517...

We have 900 Mbps FTTP.

Previously, when we were with Zen when using the Thinkbroadband Speedtest we noticed that the TBB Download tended to be under 500 Mbps and now with BT, when using the BT Smart Hub 2, it is still under 500 Mbps.

Is this normal or it it something specific in my area that is limiting this TBB download ?

Also, my latency figure on the Thinkbroadband speed graph is 33ms and with Zen it was 40ms. but I have noticed that other graphs, from other posters, have lower latency numbers, - (I have not worried about it but is this relevant)?

That looks OK. What’s wrong with it?

I am not necessarily saying that it is wrong.

I have simply asked for clarification. with regard to the TBB download line not passing 500 Mbps. - Nothing wrong in saying that you don't know.

What I am querying why, (in my case), is why the TBB download line in the Thinkbroadband Speedgraph does not pass 500 Mbps while on some other Thinkbroadband Speedgraphs from other Thinkbroadband Posters the TBB download line and the upper graph lines are both near to or above 900 Mbps..

If yours is similar it may be helpful to post your own Thinkbroadband Speedgraph for comparison purposes but the questions in my Oriiginal Post remain.

The reason that I am asking is not that I am hung up on the graphical performance but I do have an underlying concern that I am unsure about.

Overall, since I changed from Zen to BT the line has been much better but when the speed did drop below 500 Mbps I needed to use the BT Smart Hub 2 for testing purposed. and since the MyBT App has a test feature that works with the SH2 so that when the myBT App speed test is below 700 Mbps the BT system seems to automatically correct it to over 900 Mbps when I use the SH2. - That alone is a good reason to keep using the SH2 but sometimes web pages intermittently hang and I do not know if it is the SH2 or another issue.

On the whole I am happy using the SH2 but I have my own quad core AX router and I do not know if the web pages intermittently locking up is the SH2 or the ISP and that stops me from moving away from the SH2 until i know.

Nothing about the TBB download is 'capped' artificially.

That test is single threaded, and is more about latency than any speed limit.

This is why the X6 test is always higher - as it's running six concurrent threads which more fully utilises the connection. This is why you always get high results from certain other speedtest sites. They always do many threads to get higher results, and don't run a single thread at all.

The TBB test is more representative of a file download, and the X6 more like downloading a Linux ISO via a torrent.

This is a typical test for me on a Mikrotik RB5009 router on BT "900". It's perfectly normal.

In reply to a post by summat:

.....That test is single threaded, and is more about latency than any speed limit.....

Hi summat,

Thank you for your very informative and helpful post.

Regarding latency, I notice that your latency, (on the Thinkbroadband Speed Test), is around 9ms. while mine is over 33ms and often 40ms. - Do you have any idea why your latency is lower.

Is the difference in latency down to my local exchange or could it be that the fibre cable between my house and the exchange is inadequate in some way or not all fibre ?

In reply to a post by Fido:

Regarding latency, I notice that your latency, (on the Thinkbroadband Speed Test), is around 9ms. while mine is over 33ms and often 40ms. - Do you have any idea why your latency is lower.

That is usually where you are in the UK. I believe the TBB site and testers are in one of the Telehouse buildings in London.

In reply to a post by Fido:

I am not necessarily saying that it is wrong.

I have simply asked for clarification. with regard to the TBB download line not passing 500 Mbps. - Nothing wrong in saying that you don't know.

What I am querying why, (in my case), is why the TBB download line in the Thinkbroadband Speedgraph does not pass 500 Mbps while on some other Thinkbroadband Speedgraphs from other Thinkbroadband Posters the TBB download line and the upper graph lines are both near to or above 900 Mbps..

If yours is similar it may be helpful to post your own Thinkbroadband Speedgraph for comparison purposes but the questions in my Oriiginal Post remain.

As noted Fido it all looks perfectly fine and reasonable. Ping times to the TBB speed tester are relatively meaningless in the grand scheme of things. By all means if you think your otherwise general pings times to other services that you readily access are somehow excessive, or out of keeping with what you'd expect, then post them up.

But by the looks of the TBB results it looks fine. Single thread DL performance could well be down to your own PC/laptop setup and hardware than anything more sinister. Again it looks generally OK.

That leave me with the underlying main reason for my original query. - I am not too bothered about graphs or the indicated higher latency, (as long as the xbox operation seems OK), but web pages intermittently hanging is a concern for me.

It did happened once with our Asus RT-AX88u and it has happened a lot more than once with the SH2 when the line speed had dropped below 500 Mbps.

As pointed out with the SH2 when the MyBT app is used for a speed test the low speed seems to be corrected automatically by BT but I do not know if the 1 Ghz. two core CPU on the SH2 is part of the intermittent web page hanging issue or it is something else. - (The house is fully wired with ethernet cable and only three or four items are on wifi so there is no reason for it to hang).

The hanging you mentioned.. this sort of thing is often down to less than perfect DNS.. have you tried using alternative servers such as Google (8.8.8.8) or Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) to see if it resolves the issue? Try it on one machine first, if you haven't already, to see if it helps.

When I first had my FTTP installed I initially ran the SH2 to verify all was working correctly. Speed tests looked pretty much identical to the one I linked earlier. I cannot say I ever experienced any hanging on it either. That said it was only in place for about a day.

As a bit of an aside, generally routers use hardware offloading (using fixed function hardware, but not the CPU cores themselves) to give throughput performance the CPU alone is otherwise unable to provide, so the fact a router says it's "quad core" Vs one that is "only" dual doesn't necessarily mean one is automatically better than the other.

Finally, regarding your earlier question on ping.. as others have said that's almost certainly dictated by your location in the UK, and the way your ISP gets your data from where you are to the TBB servers. Without knowing where you are, and a trace route to the TBB servers, we cannot say any more than that.