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Great analogy! For those who'd argue "What if that construction zone was not there, those traffic lights were green, no accident on the route, ..." Do you want to know how long it might take if everything were perfect... or would you rather know the true amount of time it will take? Who cares about the time it would take if there were no variables, it's irrelevant if it can never be achieved in the real world. I don't know about you but if I set off on a road trip and Google Maps said, "6 hours" and then it ends up taking 24 hours because of stop lights, construction and speed limits (all known before)... I'd be really pissed. I'd rather be told the truth with all things considered so that I can plan accordingly.

I had a problem similar to this once and it turned out to be an intermittently bad router. I got similar high and low speeds during each test. Over a period of a month it was about the same - widely varying speeds. After that it got progressively worse, then the unit finally stopped working. There are a lot of possibilities for what the problem is. Try plugging an Ethernet cable directly from your computer to your modem. If the results are consistently good, then your problem is between the modem and your computer..

Today, during yet another worthless 'field tech' appointment re our Suddenlink ("suddenLYUNlinked" as we call them) speeds crawling along at amazing slow speeds, then spiking to very high (DL/incoming), then [the modem freaks out due to the spike, as explained to me once by a suddenlink phone tech support rep], I tried showing the TWO suddenlink tech employees that the site they wanted me to test at (https://SPACEfastDOTcom) was a 'flash-based' test and therefore not truly accurate for reasons detailed here at testmy.net. They refused to even consider what I was saying. (Typical suddenlink.) I tried showing them the graph and the individual entries from the auto tests (both tmn and not, both DL/UP, and DL only) I've been running ever 10-15 mins. for days and days. Again, no interest. Either they had no idea what I was talking about, or they just flat out weren't interested in any info source that conflicted with their canned 'you're getting exactly [the speeds] what you are supposed to' canned, unhelpful, useless speech. They refused TO EVEN LOOK at the screenshot I'd saved on the 'why flash tests aren't accurate' testmy.net website info page. And the fight continues......... (after one tech actually agreed that I might just have to switch to 56k dial-up fro days of old..... figures, right?)

I have the same experience with 4G (cellular LTE) based broadband connections, such as when positioning a directional antenna. When the network is quiet (e.g. early on a weekend morning), there can be a large variation between what SpeedTest and TestMy reports if the antenna is not aimed correctly. Once the antenna is carefully aimed, the TestMy results climb up towards what Speedtest reports. It's similar also if there are swaying branches in line of sight as Speedtest will again ignore the brief dips as if the bandwidth is sustained. If Speedtest measured road trip speeds, their speed test methodology would eliminate traffic lights, construction zones, slow vehicles, busy junctions and everything else that accounted for the slowest 30% of the journey. If TestMy measured road trips, it would run a stopwatch from the moment of departure to the moment of arrival. Of course like the Speedtest fanatics, there would be those that would argue the same for road trip measurements - "What if that construction zone was not there, those traffic lights were green, no accident on the route, ..."