Strange results from Speedtest.net

[MrTreacle]

Hello everyone,

Speedtest.net has been producing some funny results recently for my connection. Ping seems normal, but the download test starts off very slowly, around 1.3 Mbps, then apparently speeds up, resulting in a final figure of over 25 Mbps, or even higher sometimes. Downloads and pingtest.net show more consistent figures, as does the BT speed checker. This problem was in place when I was still with Demon last month.

Any thoughts? This isn't really a problem, as my connection is working fine, but it would be good to know what's going on.

Cheers

Kevin

[Mouseroo]

You're not alone!  I've noticed exactly the same thing for the past 3 or 4 months now; typically runs steady at about a 3 meg connection for the first two-thirds of the data download phase, and then jumps up to over 20, so not really sure how to interpret the results   

Have you tried the BT speedtest http://speedtester.bt.com/?
It at least gives you an idea of what speeds your line should be capable of.

[Steve]

The usual issue with speedtest.net is AV software on the testing machine,it seems to cache the data and then release it giving ridiculous results sometimes. Just turn it off temporarily.

[Bill]

Unless yoo get a pretty steady speed during the test, speedtest.net (and other ookla-based tests) isn't to be trusted anyway-

http://wiki.ookla.com/test_flow

The only trustworthy way is download a known number of bytes and divide that by how long it takes. IMHO of course

[Steve]

There are some test files here http://www.thinkbroadband.com/download.html

[Bill]

The speedtest there (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html) is easy to use, and if you register it can keep a record of all your tests... I've got results back to December 06