Same connection, two dramatically different results from two different speed tests.

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Padeen
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Joined: Thu Mar 16, 2017 3:11 pm

Same connection, two dramatically different results from two different speed tests.

Post by Padeen »

Hello all, and thanks for this site to whomever is responsible for it.
I have a "100" mb/s service from Wave in NW US. When measured with Speedtest.net I get 93 mb/s down and 6.3 up. BUT, when using Speedof.Me I get between 28 and 55 mb/s down and 5-8mb/s up. This is consistent across two different computers (one desk, the other laptop) wire-connected to the same router/modem. Anyone know what might cause this?
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Philip
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Location: Jacksonville, Florida

Post by Philip »

There are several reasons for this.

First, and most important, note that you are measuring the speed of the connection between you and a particular test server somewhere on the internet. This will be different for each test server, the path between you and the test server (varies with time), the congestion on that path at that particular time, who else on your node is using up bandwidth, how much bandwidth that test server can allocate to your connection, etc.

Also, different speed test implementations use different techniques, for example some open only a single connection, while others (like speedtest.net) open up several parallel connections.

Because of all that, measuring your speed to a distant server over a single connection will be drastically different than testing your speed to a server in your city over several parallel streams. It is the same when browsing the internet, you are dependent on the length of the path, how congested it is, what type of speed the destination server has available to allocate to that one client connection, etc.
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