Comments on: How Fast Is My Broadband Internet Connection and What Does Connection Speed Mean?

By: Ole Juul

Ole Juul — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 04:07:46 +0000

The problem with tests like speedtest.com is that they don’t give real world results. On my rural broadband connection it shows a decent average of 1.30 Mb/s, but when downloading files the actual average is closer to one quarter or less of that. After five years of constant testing using many different sources, I am quit confident in my figures. When speedtest.com reports that it would take 76 minutes to download a move (800MB) then their math is indeed correct according to their own measurement. The trouble is that it would take me closer to 5 hours to get that file. IOW, the on-line speed test results have no practical value.

By: jSUNAMI ART

jSUNAMI ART — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 03:54:41 +0000

hi i’m wondering if you can answer this trivia question that is bugging me:

if my broadband speed is 500kb/sec what speed in m/s or how long does it take for the connection between me to travel from a server in New York or LA to Sydney.. how fast is the data connections & optic cables in m/s basically ??

cant find any reference online to this .. hope u can help!!

By: Doug Hall

Doug Hall — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:36:51 +0000

Thanks for the tip Giggles. That is a much better test!

By: Edward

Edward — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:29:46 +0000

Probably worth sharing is a tip I discovered (for UK readers at least) that by removing your bell wire see do a google for “Bell Wire Fix” or see you can remove significant interference on the line which can effect your speed by up 20%!
or http://broadband-speedup.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-do-it.html

By: Giggles

Giggles — Thu, 21 May 2009 01:54:50 +0000

Not to brag or anything but I think I found a better test…. The above test gives basic speed information but no real info you quality or capability of your connection. My favorite Broadband Speed Test site is http://www.ispgeeks.com.

Click on Broadband Diagnostics then TCP Quality Test or Speed/Cap Test and the rest is simple. They also have a true speed test, voip test and a couple of other things.

You get data back like this (testing my connection)

Speed test statistics
———————
Download speed: 7437424 bps
Upload speed: 1646448 bps
Download quality of service: 97 %
Upload quality of service: 95 %
Download test type: socket
Upload test type: socket
Maximum TCP delay: 76 ms
Average download pause: 3 ms
Minimum round trip time to server: 60 ms
Average round trip time to server: 61 ms
Estimated download bandwidth: 35200000bps
Route concurrency: 4.7328215
Download TCP forced idle: 77 %
Maximum route speed: 8738000bps

Plus it even gives you graphical data such as this (based on the test above).

http://174.34.146.20/myspeed/db/report?id=1986