4 ms·

It definitely looks like testing sites are prioritized. The fastest download speed that I have gotten is maybe 7 MB (bytes) per second; generally it is 2-5 MB

It definitely looks like testing sites are prioritized. The fastest download speed that I have gotten is maybe 7 MB (bytes) per second; generally it is 2-5 MB per second. The speed test sites generally get 100 Mb per second dowload. In general the best I seem to get is about half the speed of the speed test sites. To me the real speed of the ISP is how fast one can download something one wants, not the result of a test. I would prefer to see results for downloads/uploads from youtube and various CDN networks and popular sites. I would also like to see ISP have a URL that is inside their network to test upload and download so that one can at least isolate what part of the connection might be lagging. Actually, I just used devtools to snag a 25MB file from fast.com. Curl/wget gives a speed of about 3 or 4 MB per second. That does not really seem to match up with fast.com download speed of 70Mb/second. 70/8 is 8.75, which is about double. Is fast.com accurate? Is my math wrong?

jackson1442 3y ago
I personally like https://speed.cloudflare.com https://speed.cloudflare.com since it just looks like you're doing typical CloudFlare traffic. The results viewer is also quite nice.
- is_true 3y ago
  My ISP (Telecom) gives me a speed of 250Mbps using fast.com and 40Mbps using Cloudflare's tool.
  - kortilla 3y ago
    Your isp likely has a Netflix oca or is directly peered with Netflix directly. It’s standard for any decent sized ISP since it’s either the largest or 2nd largest by volume peer (youtube being in the other).
- binkHN 3y ago
  Very cool! I never knew about this! I really appreciate the latency during upload test. I've bookmarked this and will stop using speedtest.net. Thank you!
egberts1 3y ago
MB = megabyte Mb = megabits 1 byte = 8-bit
- gnicholas 3y ago
  For years, AT&T sales reps would refer to MB when they meant Mb. Soon after I started service with them, I called to ask about the promised speed, and the tech insisted they sold Mb/s. He conferenced in a salesperson and was embarrassed to discover that the salesperson talked exclusively in terms of MB/s.
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    Did they just spell it with the abbreviations? Or did they pronounce 'megabytes' deliberately?
    - gnicholas 3y ago
      They literally said it out loud. I had spent the last 7 years on a fast university network, and had never paid for internet before that. I honestly believed that they were going to deliver the speeds they claimed.
      - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
        I wouldn't have believed "megabytes" was an Internet speed, because it never is. It's literally impossible for that to be a signaling rate on any known Layer 2 technology. ISPs use Gibibytes or Tebibytes (which they misname as Gigabytes/Terabytes) for transfer caps, but that's apples and oranges.
        gnicholas 3y ago
        > I wouldn't have believed "megabytes" was an Internet speed Perhaps HNers know better, but among lay people, pretty much no one talks about megabits. For example, people know that an MP3 is about 5MB. They know that they can email attachments up to 20MB (or sometimes 10). But I've literally never heard a lay person talk about bits, or bits per second. And the fact that ISP's transfer caps are denominated in bytes makes things all the more confusing.

jackson1442 3y ago

I personally like https://speed.cloudflare.com https://speed.cloudflare.com since it just looks like you're doing typical CloudFlare traffic. The results viewer is also quite nice.

is_true 3y ago
My ISP (Telecom) gives me a speed of 250Mbps using fast.com and 40Mbps using Cloudflare's tool.
- kortilla 3y ago
  Your isp likely has a Netflix oca or is directly peered with Netflix directly. It’s standard for any decent sized ISP since it’s either the largest or 2nd largest by volume peer (youtube being in the other).
binkHN 3y ago
Very cool! I never knew about this! I really appreciate the latency during upload test. I've bookmarked this and will stop using speedtest.net. Thank you!

egberts1 3y ago

MB = megabyte Mb = megabits 1 byte = 8-bit

gnicholas 3y ago
For years, AT&T sales reps would refer to MB when they meant Mb. Soon after I started service with them, I called to ask about the promised speed, and the tech insisted they sold Mb/s. He conferenced in a salesperson and was embarrassed to discover that the salesperson talked exclusively in terms of MB/s.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  Did they just spell it with the abbreviations? Or did they pronounce 'megabytes' deliberately?
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    They literally said it out loud. I had spent the last 7 years on a fast university network, and had never paid for internet before that. I honestly believed that they were going to deliver the speeds they claimed.
    - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
      I wouldn't have believed "megabytes" was an Internet speed, because it never is. It's literally impossible for that to be a signaling rate on any known Layer 2 technology. ISPs use Gibibytes or Tebibytes (which they misname as Gigabytes/Terabytes) for transfer caps, but that's apples and oranges.
      - gnicholas 3y ago
        > I wouldn't have believed "megabytes" was an Internet speed Perhaps HNers know better, but among lay people, pretty much no one talks about megabits. For example, people know that an MP3 is about 5MB. They know that they can email attachments up to 20MB (or sometimes 10). But I've literally never heard a lay person talk about bits, or bits per second. And the fact that ISP's transfer caps are denominated in bytes makes things all the more confusing.