How's your Internet speed?

I came across this speed test today. :cool

See thumbnail for my speed results.
Not too bad, seeing the test is probably based in the USA, and I'm going from OZ--->USA---> and back again.

Post your results, and PC setup, so others can compare.
That should generate some discussions.

I am using a Toshiba Satellite Pro P100, 2 gig RAM, Windows Ultimate 32 bit OS, ADSL2+ and Netgear modem/Router DG834v3 and DG834Gv3 Firmware Version 4.01.40, plus www.spin.net.au (Aussie ISP Provider)

Bazza

 

Murphy's Law of ISP Speed Tests:

Video streaming slows to a trickle. Loading web pages brings back flashbacks of 56K dial-up. Downloads take forever.

Curious, you run a speed test. Suddenly, the ISP issues (bandwidth throttling?) disappear during the test.

I sometimes wonder if ISPs recognize speed test web sites and respond with a quick burst of the speed you're allegedly paying for. Any thoughts on this?

 

There is just a slight veriation in these two
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1040176891.png
and the one from BandwidthPlace:

 

I can go a little better than that Bazza

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1040253192.png

I'm only 300 clicks south of you ... whats your max dload and upload as quoted by your ISP?

 

Not the best in the world but OK.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1040263043.png

 

Interesting speed differences, plastidust. :cool
Boy, I wish I could get those speeds.

To the others, thanks guys for your results. :major

Bazza

My test to Speedtest.net
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1040568047.png

Distance less than 50 miles?
More like > 1,000 miles.

Baz
===

 

Mine's decent enough for what I do:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1040604885.png

 

Depends on the server, between 15 - 30 Mbps. I'm payin for 30Mbps cable.

 

I ran two tests: Houston, TX USA to Brisbane, AU (about 8350 miles) and Houston, TX to Dallas, TX (about 200 miles).

The Aussie test was decent (over 8 Mbps), the test to Dallas sets a new record for any test at my current house (4 years) at over 24 Mbps!

My ISP is Comcast; the speed I pay for is 6 Mbps with a "Powerboost" (supposedly on smaller file downloads) to 12 Mbps.

Keep in mind I ran this at 4 PM local time from a residential area (little if any business traffic). I'll be interesting to repeat this around 8 or 9 PM once people are pigging out on bandwith traffic using Netflix, Hulu, etc.

A footnote to my "Murphy's Law" comment posted previously: About 5 minutes after posting it, my service went down for a few hours. Coincidence? I think not. rolleyes

 

Actually Bazza, that first one was a bit of a fluke, although I've had higher. I normally run any where from 15.3Mbit/s to 17.9Mbit/s down and .80+Mbit/s up, depending on time of day and location of testing server. The first one was done at 1:25am. This one(at 6:45pm) is more indicative for heavy traffic, around here:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1041288700.png
That one is a little on the slow side of normal.

Wish I could get Bill's ping times. Sorry, I should've added some specs too, Dell 4600i, XP Home, 2Gig Ram, ADSL2+, ActionTec modem/router model GT701D.

Interesting thing is the max bandwidth, for me, is supposed to be 15Mbit/s down and 1Mbit/s up. Obviously I haven't called them to see what's wrong.

 

As promised in my earlier post, I re-ran the speed test at 9:30PM (the "zero hour" for Netflix traffic).

My test to Down Under stayed about the same, my test to Dallas (although still impressive) dropped about 20%.

I still wonder if ISPs can sense when you're running a speed test - specifically, do they give such sites a "free pass" on boost speeds or bypassing throttling? Any thoughts on this?

 

My apologies for the late reply, Drizzles. :-o
I failed to notice you are from NQ. :cool

I'm using Spin.net.au and on ADSL+2 . I can't remember if they guaranteed a speed. What I can remember is 24,576 kbits UP and 1,024 kbits DOWN, I think, from some earlier dealings with them.

I don't know of the ISP name appearing on Speedtest.Net in my test.

I think it is about time I reviewed the ISP/Broadband plans/combinations now available to me, here in OZ.

Thanks for jarring me into action. :-D

Bazza

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Mine is not too bad. I hit Dallas, which is a few hundred miles away. Upload could be a bit higher.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1042885010.png

 

Lol sall good, I'm with Westnet and also on ADSL2+ and my modem says my connection to the ISP server is 20000 down and 1000 up but I never see it.

Being in Cairns you could probably get High Speed Cable couldnt you?

 

I'm meant to be on 50Mb but the highest i've ever had is 32Mbps on a torrent.

Im getting 19Mbps right now which isn't bad for this time of day

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1043320657.png

Virginmedia UK - 50Mbps Cable broadband.

Intel Q8300 @ 2.5Ghz
6GB DDR2 (fitted but im running x86 at the moment so it only addresses 3GB)
Win 7 Ultimate
Cat5 to a TP Link Router (the wifi on this sucks, but it has some nice features/tools)
Motorolla Modem

 

Mine varies, I've seen it over 40 for down and 6 up but this is about average. I take no real stock in such tests.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1043865124.png

 

I always find the [official] Ubuntu torrents are a good place to truly test your speed, they will pretty much give you anything you can take, I've seen over 100Mbps on a friends office network in the middle of the night.

 

Wow that's a really nice upload there Laura ...

 

+1 on that

20mb up is a loooooooooooooooooooong way away for me with my ISP i reckon

 

Yeah, but I'm a cheapskate. :-D

Bazza

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lol fair enough ... itll be interesting to see how this NBN really affects us ... whether we get faster speeds if prices rise or drop etc ...

 

Yep, the NBN (National Broadband Network to the non-Aussies ) will certainly be interesting when eventually introduced to all Aussies.

Bazza

===

 

Been doing some reading about NBN - that's pretty awesome! Sure wish we here in the States could get something like that rolling.

This is about my average:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1044846390.png

I do live out in the sticks, and it's a very basic AT&T package, but still: after years of AOL dialup, even those specs are blazingly fast in comparison!

 

I'm still a little skeptical about the speed of the continuous connection between the satellites and nodes ... but .. eh well see.

 

It's going to cost up to AUD$49 Billion dollars when fully rolled out.:cry

The USA 48 states are about the same land mass as OZ, so it would cost a lot less per head of population, if a similar scheme were introduced in the USA.

There is still a lot of folks against it, and lots of skeptics. We will see what happens. The cost, per house per month, for the NPN worries me. I can't see me getting it for around $30 per month.

Bazza

===

 

I've had AT&T DSL for several years - now running what used to be called their "premium" package. I average 5.40 mb/s down and 0.484 mb/s upload. I think we shell out around 25 - 30 bucks for it. Not the fastest speed available, but like Caliban said sure beats the heck outta dialup!

Also, the speed over the years has been very consistent, no matter what time of day. It has never varied more then a few kb/s. The service has only been down twice in seven years, and then only for a few mins each time. Can't really complain.

 

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1046013174.png

Tastes great
Less filling
and free courtesy of my friend/neighbor!


http://www.speedtest.net/result/1046025967.png

I live out in the sticks too...?

 

hehe - yeah, but you're using Comcast cable: apples and oranges...rolleyes

 

Yeah Caliban is still using our lovely friend, ADSL Broadband, and a very basic plan at that. I dunno how you put up with it Caliban lol.

 

I ain't complaining, Driz - not into online gaming (I'm a stand-alone first person shooter kind of guy) or video downloads, so it serves my purposes well...and it's cheap!

 

Fair enough, yeh we pay heaps for any decent plan over here ... cuz I'm out of the way a bit, I pay $90 a month for 20 on and 20 off with ADSL2+

 

Here in the States, I learned a dirty (but legitimate) trick that cut my ISP bill from Comcast by almost 50%.

I was paying about $58 for my 6Mbps service (ISP only, I have DirecTV and use Vonage for phone service). I called Comcast and told them their two competitors (Windstream DSL and Clear 4G Home) were wooing me with lower rates on similar speeds.

I was transferred to Comcast's "retention" department. By agreeing to keep Comcast ISP, my rate for the same speed was cut to $29.95/month for the next year. Next October, I call Comcast again and repeat the process.

This comes out to about $360 over the next year that stays in my pocket without giving up any speed.

 

Nice! That sounds like an idea!! lol ... I might try that when my plan comes up for renewal.

 

Couldn't find TO this time so had to go to Oakville. Upload speed is, what the cable ISP told me, low due to my choice of package which is Express. That upload never varies!!

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1046966307.png

 

When I first signed up about 3 years ago, I was paying for 10meg download, and it was always pretty good. About 9-10 months ago, I ran a SpeedTest and suddenly I was 20meg!!! I don't pay more, and was never notified by my ISP, but I'm stoked that I rec'd a "free upgrade".

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1046970581.png

I tried several different servers ranging in distance from 200mi to over 1200mi and every result was in the +/- 20meg download range (sometimes as high as 27meg!), but all upload speeds were always at almost exactly 0.9meg....

(also, a couple of months ago, I bought a cable modem on ebay for $14.99US with free shipping and returned the modem I was 'leasing' from my ISP; this has shaved about $12 off my internet bill each month! The modem lease was $5.99 monthly, but after "fees" and "taxes" and "services", the new modem from ebay has already paid for itself; I'll save $140US a year just by using my own modem!! for those interested: simply visit the "supported hardware" or "supported modems" page at your ISP web site, hit ebay and see what you can find!)

 

Not bad dlt, my ISP never says anything about speed increases but it does send a letter when the bandwidth is changed. It's now at 40GB u/d/month together as if I exceed that then it's $8/GB extra for my tier of service. It's a decent price @ $40 since it's also my cable TV company. It's a decent firm but they can be very stupid. It took them a year with 6 visits just to change out a $12 modem which has been working just fine since then.:confusedrolleyes

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1046979356.png

 

I do not understand my ISP being so slow, I am paying for 30mbs but the best i can do is 18mbs and that depends on the time of day.
Having said that i have a good package that gives me free phone calls anywhere in Europe, unlimited bandwidth and cable TV for $80 per month so the speed thing is not important as i do not download movies or videos, so all in all i am happy.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1047144640.png

 

Bandwidth limit? Haha, I remember that with a 14,400 baud connection from CompuServe. I've never encountered that with DSL, though!:cool

 

Heres mine from ... whenever it was from lol a week ago or something ...

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1040253192.png

And heres one from 5 mins ago.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1047365137.png

Even though I pay for a 20,000 dload and 1000 upload plan, they only guarantee 3000 dload and 256 upload :\ so there's nothing they will do about the remaining that I see to be missing .... Although I must admit, it's not as bad as yours. Cable, Satellite or ADSL?

 

http://www.pingtest.net/result/28984586.png

Cool!

 

I reckon we are gonna start seeing more bandwidth limits in future, i pray most days that it doesn't as I pull down about 250GB [2GB up] a week according to my router :O

But i think with all the high bandwidth content available today, it is going to be inevitable to keep things running smoothly at a reasonable cost.

 

the ping test gives me varied results.

If i ping the UK i get.
http://www.pingtest.net/result/28986644.png

But if i ping my own ISP i get less.
http://www.pingtest.net/result/28986731.png

 

I disagree. Technology gets cheaper as it progresses. I think we will see possibly higher prices for the services we currently use, but I don't see bandwidth caps in the future.

Look at cell phones, for instance. They used to only have pay as you go internet, text messaging, etc. Now, unlimited services for both (at a price).

Also, the availability of free wifi spots has increased exponentially in the last few years, making the internet cheaper than ever for certain people.

 

I disagree, ther is no such thing [in the UK anyway] as "unlimited" on any mobile phone plan, be that for data, calls or texts, they all have some form of "abuse" policy. and this applies more so to Mobile internet, i could probably use the monthly allowance on an "unlimited" data plan on a mobile phone in a day [speeds providing]


And seeing as it would probaly affect less than 5% of users [based on virgins numbers of people affected by ther speed limits] i can see them going for caps before putting prices up in an extremely competitiive market.


Also, a lot of people might not be aware that ISP's in the UK are trying to get high bandwidth sites like iPlayer to subsidise the vast traffic ther customers use...

Personally i think it is a laughable idea, but somone is going to pay for the bandwidth, or it is going to get capped.


Virgin already cap your speed if you exceed certain limits within certain times.

 

Have you tried pinging a site yourself and see what it gets?

 

This is what i get if i ping MGs but i am not sure if i understand the results??

 

Try pinging somewhere a bit closer, this is the results i get pinging MG and pinging my local ISP address....


I cant get the pic to display proeprly, here is a link ....

http://picturepush.com/public/4593645