speed tests all to pot.......

[Xbandito]

http://www.dslzoneuk.net/speedtest/testresult.php?result=3794.5&test=8192&date=1145175786

and

http://www.dslzoneuk.net/speedtest/testresult.php?result=4850.8&test=3000&date=1145175853

within a minute of each other 

[Speedfreak]

Heres mine

http://www.dslzoneuk.net/speedtest/testresult.php?result=4772.4&test=8192&date=1145186303

And

http://www.dslzoneuk.net/speedtest/testresult.php?result=3609.2&test=8192&date=1145186435

[Jeff]

What`s wrong with those fellas? Looks fine to me?

[Xbandito]

The speed is "sort" of fine 
But the difference of 1mbit within a minute......something wrong somewhere 

[Jeff]

 There`s nothing wrong, it`s called MaxDSL. You will get speeds "up to 8Mbit" when conditions allow. Conditions that will not allow you to get the full 8Mbit are (among others):

Your sync rate (some folk can`t sync at 8MBit)

Overheads (even on an 8MBit sync, you will only see just over 7Mbit throughput)

Exchange contention (even if VP status is green, no exchange in the country can cater for every single person being synced at 8Mbit and downloading full throttle at 800KB/sec plus)

The device you are using to check your throughput (can suffer from contention too, try a real time test such as this which is more comprehensive than a few second check on a popular speedtester).

Reading between the lines, it has been suggested that during peak times, even folk on cracking exchanges may not even see throughput better than 2MBit

[Scott]

OMG....



Let it run through to 50% and it was still at 1000 kb/sec.

[Xbandito]

There`s nothing wrong, it`s called MaxDSL.

Jeff, them speed tests were done in less than a MINUTE between them, yet there was a gain of 1mb in speed, are you telling me that maxdsl fluctuates that much   


As for Scott pfffttt 

[Scott]

As for Scott pfffttt 

Sorry sorry...

[Bill]

The speed is "sort" of fine 
But the difference of 1mbit within a minute......something wrong somewhere 

I've seen bigger swings than that, though only once or twice.

It's a statistical thing I think- most of the time the number of users will be roughly constant, but there'll be occasional highs (speed=cr*p) and occasinal lows (very good speeds). The average number of users compared to what the exchange can handle will determine at which end of the speed spectrum your average speeds will lie.

[pazzaTgreat]

Scott - That's nothing - check this!!!!



There is a bug in the way Firefox reports D/L speed and any delay in actually ok-ing the downloads means that the file is downloaded in the background but the time count doesn't start until you OK it giving a skewed D/L rate.

Of course, yours might well be right. I'm just saying don't trust firefox to closely. 

p.s. the speeds you are getting appear to be beyond the theoretical maximum for 8Mbit, just like mine!!!!

p.p.s my real speeds are around the 4-5 Mbps mark, with dips as low as 1.5 and highs of 6.  I should have finished the trial period today but nothing seems to have changed.

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[Jeff]

Bandit, the swings you see are probably down to speedtester contention. You are far better off by doing a decent real time download of a few megabytes from a known reliable server

btw, AG have just updated their speedtester. ca 11mb download but alas, it too is showing some signs of contention, probably due to the novelty factor. I did a speedtest 15 mins ago, ca 5,015kbps from a 6.2MBit sync (not too shabby), just done a one now, showed a 1902kpbs but a real time from Fuller Zen came in at ca 500KB/sec

[Xbandito]

Cant afford a few mb's.....getting close to the dreaded cap      j/k

Got a funny feeling its our exchange.....cannot handle the mass of "brats" that jump online here, between the hours of 10am and 11pm   

I have decided I going to become a night person...stuff the days 

[Jeff]

Hehe, might be a good thing to do

To be fair, Simon was one of the only ISPs to publicly declare that during peak times, speeds may not get any better than they were on 2 meg and if ne1 is on a contended exchange (like me for example) then speeds will probably be the same as they were pre-Max. I concur to a certain extent, though this week, speeds have been very good ... exchange still red btw.

Personally, I`ve learned to just get what I`m given. My speeds would just be the same with another ISP, at least this way, I know my connection is not throttled, prioritised or shaped in any way.

[Bill]

Just out of interest, here's a Netmeter graph of the download of a 100Mb file from the Zen test page. Average speed was 490Kbytes/sec (time taken about 200sec), peaks are around 800Kbytes/sec, troughs around 100Kbytes/sec.

Rather indicates the futility of speed tests on MaxDSL, I think...

[Jeff]

 Bill, do that another 30 times and you`ve hit yer cap

[Bill]

You've lost a nought on your calculator, mate... all that decorating has been too much for you

[pazzaTgreat]

I did the same netmeter thing and see pretty much the same results, although my spikes were a little smaller, more like 750KB. 

The speed of throughput does appear to vary considerably across a single download.

My speed tests in the past show a distinct pattern.

6ish Mbps at 4-8am
4ish Mbps at 8am-5pm
2ish Mbps at 6-8pm (has dropped as low as 1.3)
3ish Mbps at 8 - 11pm
4ish Mbps at 11pm to around 4am

However, to make myself take this into perspective, even the drop to 1.3 at that time is far better than I was getting on a 2Mb connection with Freedom 2 Surf and on average I am getting 3 and sometimes 4 times better than I used to get.

Maybe all these spike are there because all us numpties are tying up the known test servers perpetually testing our shiny new MAX lines 

[Jeff]

I think you`ve hit the nail on the head there pazza! We predicted from Max day one that speedtesters would be swamped, and folk would hit their caps quickly just doing speedtests! I too have noted that throughput is worse during peak and I`m led to believe this is the norm as electrical crosstalk kicks in :\ Having said that, last few days have been unusually tremendous peak time?? I`m learning that basically, that`s MaxDSL

Bill, Geordies are nee good at maths ... but we all know how many beers we can get in during an evening

[pazzaTgreat]

Update

I hope this is not just a blip but I have not been slowed down at all from my normal top rate between 4pm and now, 8:30pm when I would usually be at 2Mb or below.

Various sites including non-uk have delivered netmeter graphs between 500 and 830KB/s but still the sort of 'grass' effect shown by Bill (I was installing Visual Studio Express downloads which are sizeable.)

Incidentally, for anyone interested which is probably no-one have you noticed the discrepancy in reported download rates between netmeter, firefox, ie and freshdownload?

I'm hoping Netmeter is the most accurate as it did finally show burst downloads in excess of 800KB

Double Update - nah it's a blip.

Ranging from 2.5 to 4.5 now. Shame - I was getting excited.