Speedtest.net

Anyone used speedtest.net? I don't know what to make of the site after last night. Net service went to $#$^, so I went to speedtest to see what was going on. It reported normal speeds as usual. I dug around and found some other test sites and tested there. Sure enough the speeds were way low for download. I'm supposed to have 100 D/5 U. I went to 4 different sites and the results were very similar for all of them. Does speedtest.net actually do anything? Pics below and I put the times on the pics...

 

I've used speedtest.net a lot. I just ran it then ran speed tests with 4 other UK-based speedtest providers. They all came up with the same download/upload speeds to within 2mb per second download and barely .5mb upload.
Of yours, speedofme, speakeasy and bandwithplace showed download speeds 10-15 mbs SLOWER, and upload about 1mb slower. But nothing like the divergence you see.
Personally, I think these last three are crap testers.

 

I also just carried out a more complicated speedtest and diagnostic with BT Wholesale, the actual supplier of the Fibre Optic connection for my ISP, with a direct Ethernet connection to the router and wifi disabled. Those results also came within a whisker of speedtest.net

 

Max, they are probably crap testers. I tested today at those sites, and the numbers were just like you mentioned However, they weren't as off (SpeedofMe reporting 80 MB DL today) as when I was experiencing the problems (2-3 MB). I know the net service was more or less offline at the time, because streaming video wasn't working. Also, I have a couple of time lines from the time, and you can actually visualize how the service came back online. Yet, the speedtest.net test remained the same throughout that period of time. Pic is of the history at SpeedOf.Me, starting at 9:45 PM when the problem started and ending around 11:15, when the net was fully functioning for me again. I thought the graph was pretty telling that there was definitely an issue. I was just happy it wasn't the PCs, but it affected all 3 I looked at here. Our net provider just changed hands and the speeds went way up. Maybe they were bringing some new servers online or something...

 

Yes sounds like the problem was with the ISP servers. As far as the testers are concerned, speakeasy was the only one that simply would not allow me to choose my location, and had the lowest figures.