Internet speed freeks! Need halp. I've always used speedtest.net but I'm getting hugely varying readings from that to https://samknows.com/realspeed/ - from a brief look around the internet it seems speedtest isn't actually that reliable. But I can't find out if https://samknows.com/realspeed/ is. Any thoughts and opinions?
@Thayer I only ever use fast.com - it seems a better indicator to me.
@Thayer I usually see people saying speedtest.net is one of the better tests and always seems reliable for me.
Ironically that realspeed test doesn't load for me. Doesn't seem to like my network 👀 🤔
@Thayer When I was trying them, fast.com always read substantially lower than Ookla's SpeedTest.net
But they're always going to vary considerably.
SamKnows is good - they do lots of work with different ISPs.
@Thayer I use https://speed.cloudflare.com which has some nice bits of info on there - again, caveat being that you’re hitting their local CDN, but still, it’s the tool I’ve settled with
@thayer I believe that the SamKnows test is *very* local - you may literally be downloading from someone just down the road from you. That 'realspeed' doesn't even work on my BT/EE ADSL, so it's almost certainly a deal SamKnows & Virgin has for monitoring/testing.
With Virgin, the immediate area does share bandwidth, so it might be getting varying readings depending on what other people are doing - the 'noisy neighbours' problem.
OTOH, I did teach Sam PHP 20 years ago :D
@Alister yeah I was wondering this, thanks for saying so! I've basically run it across everything I can find and taken an average. I seem to be getting 700-1200 for a 1gb pipe so I guess I'm average it's acceptable. Also feeling pretty lucky I get anything above 500 at all tbh!
@markwalker I just tried fast.com and that seemed to be a better indicator for me. I am suspicious of realspeed as Virgin asked me to use it ;)
@Thayer fast.com is generally regarded as one of the more unreliable. I think it tends to read faster than it should
Having said that - I'm getting the same kind of result from speedtest.net and fast.com right now.
Edited 267d ago
@markwalker that's handy to know... thanks! They all seem so different! Getting 300-800 on speedtest, getting 1000 on fast.com and 1100 on realspeed. I'm testing a 1gb connection.
@markwalker @Thayer fast.com is reading from Netflix’s CDN, so will generally be faster than you’ll see in practice because you’re connecting to a server within your ISP’s network most of the time.
@Thayer You testing via cable or wifi? Wifi adds a bunch more variables into tests that makes it more difficult
@markwalker don't even get me started on wifi, having all sorts of drop out from my mesh placements and device capabilities ahaha
@Thayer 😂 You've got me looking at my network now as I'm only getting 90Mb on my 500Mb line out on the AP I'm on even with the GbE connection to the router.
This is why I try to default to "does it work" network management. If it's working, you're probably ok 😆
@markwalker my issue is a household full of gamers. So speed, ping and uptime is a big deal. And all of my therapy work is over video, so making sure I have a rock solid connection speed is super important... just as someone has a breakthrough... OHAI DOWNTIME.. never happened yet but can you imagine.
@Thayer Yeah that makes sense!
And I've found a slow link in my network! Really hope it's not a bad cable as it's sealed in place 😬