Maybe maybe not but I know that I can download at over 6MBps and rarely see over 20Mbps reported by the TBB tester so something is wrong for sure. The multithreading Flash test is pretty much the same.

The Speedtest.net test shows a representation of how stable the download speed is while it is running. If I do one one on my phone it can be seen to fluctuate wildly but the VM one is just about always rock solid so the peak and average should be very similar. If it was reporting the minimum then I could believe it but as it stands I regard it as worthless on my connection.

===

Example of speedtest.net actually in progress - downstream complete upstream in progress - it doesn't show stability bar for upstream. - http://www.kwikbreaks.webspace.virginmedia.com/speed...

Here is a Networkx graph during speedtests....

http://www.kwikbreaks.webspace.virginmedia.com/netwo...

Edited by kwikbreaks (Sat 06-Aug-11 09:36:59)

On the TBB Speedtester, I generally get 6.5 Mbps on both my Ethernet-connected Vista Tower and WiFi Windows 7 Laptop.

My WiFi XP Netbook gets around 5.5 Mps, all three through the same "up to 8 Mbps" Orange Livebox.

I acknowledge that these are Averages, as Andrew has mentioned earlier.

Trying on Speedtest, the first two average about 0.3 Mbps faster, within the range of variability I would expect.

The WiFi XP Netbook averages in the the 3 to 5 Mbps, more variability in the averages.

The first two PCs show what I presume to be "burst speeds" of up to about 8.5 Mbps whilst the test is taking place, with peaks spread out along the test graph.


However, the WiFi XP Netbook during the first part of Speedtest has shown speeds frequently in the 10 to 12 Mbps, rising to frequently 15 Mbps; and on two occasions, hitting 25 Mbps.

BUT in the later parts of each Speedtest, it drops to about 2 to 3 Mbps, giving averages around 3 to 5 Mbps for each Speedtest.

===========================

Does this imply that the Orange Livebox is capable of running continuously at those much higher speeds?

Where is the speed, whether "burst" or Average, measured on both TBB and Speedtest?

How do they relate to both the "up to 8 Mbps" Orange Service; and to the 54 Mbps of the WiFi link?

Thanks

The speedtest 'problems'; in this discussion were for Virgin Media customers who were seeing strange test results recently.

If on an up to 8Mbps ADSL service, then any speedtest reporting over 7.1Mbps is giving a wrong result.

Bursts are often down to software firewalls buffering data

You have replied to the off topic (nonVM) post but ignored mine. Did you look at my graphs? If I run the TBB speedtest Networx shows it runs at ~ 20Mbps but if I run the speedtest.net test it goes at ~ 50Mbps.

I know from forum discussions that many VM customers see exactly the same thing. There must be a routing problem between VM and TBB. From the looks of it one leg must be ADSL

1. recent traffic management issue on VM network
2. Well known that some routes out of VM or into can be congested, and that is down to VM to resolve

I know I can get 100Meg from VM connections on our tester.

No ADSL involved at our end, GigE is used on our network, and Seb and John have full visibility of all the network hardware, and when Seb says it is not in our network believe him.

I'm not sure where the problem lies especially as pathping shows nothing obvious..

Tracing route to speedtest2.thinkbroadband.com [80.249.109.154]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
0 Acer-Desktop.cable.virginmedia.net [192.168.0.141]
1 192.168.0.1
2 cpc1-nrte22-2-0-gw.8-4.cable.virginmedia.com [82.5.20.1]
3 nrth-core-1b-ae1-2555.network.virginmedia.net [213.106.255.209]
4 nrth-bb-1b-so-511-0.network.virginmedia.net [212.43.162.241]
5 brnt-bb-1a-as2-0.network.virginmedia.net [212.43.162.217]
6 brnt-bb-1b-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.174.226]
7 brnt-tmr-1-ae5-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.159.50]
8 telc-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.185.74]
9 linx-gw1.thdo.ncuk.net [195.66.226.240]
10 speedtest2.thinkbroadband.com [80.249.109.154]

Computing statistics for 250 seconds...
Source to Here This Node/Link
Hop RTT Lost/Sent = Pct Lost/Sent = Pct Address
0 Acer-Desktop.cable.virginmedia.net [192.168.0.141] 0/ 100 = 0% |
1 0ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 192.168.0.1 0/ 100 = 0% |
2 17ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% cpc1-nrte22-2-0-gw.8-4.cable.virginmedia.com [82.5.20.1] 0/ 100 = 0% |
3 14ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% nrth-core-1b-ae1-2555.network.virginmedia.net [213.106.255.209] 0/ 100 = 0% |
4 19ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% nrth-bb-1b-so-511-0.network.virginmedia.net [212.43.162.241] 0/ 100 = 0% |
5 19ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% brnt-bb-1a-as2-0.network.virginmedia.net [212.43.162.217] 0/ 100 = 0% |
6 19ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% brnt-bb-1b-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.174.226] 0/ 100 = 0% |
7 19ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% brnt-tmr-1-ae5-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.159.50] 0/ 100 = 0% |
8 16ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% telc-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.185.74] 0/ 100 = 0% |
9 18ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% linx-gw1.thdo.ncuk.net [195.66.226.240] 0/ 100 = 0% |
10 16ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% speedtest2.thinkbroadband.com [80.249.109.154]

Trace complete.

As most congestion on VM occurs at the local level that is what I'd normally want to check if I suspected a problem and as the TBB test is always sub par it makes it useless for me and many others on VM.

I doubt that there is a huge amount of congestion at 6:30 omn a Monday morning yet still I only see



I suspect the problem lies more in the test code itself. I'm on Win 7 Opera on a fairly low end PC.

Edited by kwikbreaks (Mon 08-Aug-11 06:47:25)

If it was the code then would show up the same issue on all providers with faster speeds....

A slow PC may have an effect i.e. java not running as well, hence we do a flash version too.

CPU load while running the tests is low so any problem would be something other than processor power. As I mentioned earlier I see similar results from your Flash based tester.

I ran tests earlier today using this XP netbook - a Vodafone sim in a 3 Mii and with that I got...

TBB 1.2Mbps / 1.8Mbps up
Speedtest.net 2.91Mbps / 1.02Mbps up

3G and WiFi both vary but I'm a foot from the Mii and 150m from the Vodafone cell so I wouldn't expect such big variations. On 3G I can't afford to waste my allowance running a load of speedtests. I'm assuming I'd see that, as before, both tests report correctly on what was achieved and for some reason I get poor download speeds using the TBB tester again.

I really have no idea why I can no longer get the TBB tester to report the sort of speeds I know I can get from my VM connection doing real downloads but it is a plain fact that I can't and I'm not the only one. At least I've explained why I don't regard it as being a useful tool.

I agree if low results off peak outside of shaping hours then something else is probably the cause rather than congestion.

6.11am on my 30mbit connection.



my dumeter graph showed a very slow start but the end of the test was at 3.9meg/sec full speed.

the issue could be down to the congestion control used on the tbb servers.