10 replies to this topic

[Smith6612]

Hey guys, I'm not quite sure if I reported this previously. I remember tying up this post some time ago and then forgetting to submit it afterwards. Anyways, it seems the current version of testmy.net has a few issues that should be addressed.

1: For those of us who like running a more sustained download and upload test for, say connections that need time to ramp up the speed on the upload (due to TCP/IP Auto-tuning, server settings, routes, etc) but have slower connections such as a 768kbps upload, I find that to servers such as the East Coast server if the upload test doesn't complete in a certain amount of time the file finishes uploading and I never receive a result back, instead getting a connection reset message. Sometimes it goes through but it's generally to a connection reset most attempts. I do not see these issues with fast connections or short (10 second) tests.

2: It seems as though the upload speed test has an issue where it is reporting a speed based on how long the test took. From what I see on my network monitor here when doing a 29.2MB test, I can see the line pushing 85-90KB/s solid according to a WAN network graph built-in to my router (DD-WRT and a Windows Network meter) however testmy.net reports back indicating the speed is half of that, at about 40KB/s or about 320Kbps. This is a random problem that seems to occur regardless of how long the test runs, but it seems improved in some browsers such as IE instead of others such as Firefox and Chrome. I know Firefox has an option to adjust the Sending Buffer, but this doesn't make a difference. It almost seems like it's something Javascript or test related since the upload file seems to be dynamically generated.

3: On machines with a small amount of RAM or a weak CPU, it seems the upload test when running a large file test (most often 17.5MB and higher files) tends to cause the browser to consume a good amount of processor time, depending on the browser of course (this mainly includes IE and Chrome). In addition, the browser uses double to triple the amount of additional memory based on the test size. This may be something to fix as it really decreases the performance of the test.

[CA3LE]

First, welcome to TestMy.net... and thank you for taking the time to write me.

What may be happening is a delay in the transaction. If there is a pause before the upload is actually initiated that time is taken into consideration. You might transfer quicker once it actually starts but in all reality once the pause is calculated in your overall speed will drop... I believe this is important information to know... but then again it will be nice to also know the sustained speed without that pause.

Right now I'm on vacation but I'll return to programming after about the 20th. I have allot of ideas that I want to put on paper (well, not really paper I guess ) once I get back. One of them will be an extra statistic on your results that show your maximum speed during the transfer and the sustained speed calculated from the moment bits start flowing.

In addition I'll also be adding latency... and will be opening up an API that will allow anyone with a website to host their own speed test... there are a ton of other things that I'll be working on. You'll just have to wait and see what I come up with.

Have you tried http://old.testmy.net?

[Smith6612]

First, welcome to TestMy.net... and thank you for taking the time to write me.

What may be happening is a delay in the transaction. If there is a pause before the upload is actually initiated that time is taken into consideration. You might transfer quicker once it actually starts but in all reality once the pause is calculated in your overall speed will drop... I believe this is important information to know... but then again it will be nice to also know the sustained speed without that pause.

Right now I'm on vacation but I'll return to programming after about the 20th. I have allot of ideas that I want to put on paper (well, not really paper I guess ) once I get back. One of them will be an extra statistic on your results that show your maximum speed during the transfer and the sustained speed calculated from the moment bits start flowing.

In addition I'll also be adding latency... and will be opening up an API that will allow anyone with a website to host their own speed test... there are a ton of other things that I'll be working on. You'll just have to wait and see what I come up with.

Have you tried http://old.testmy.net?

I have. old.testmy.net in fact reports the upload properly for my connection. The new one always shows half of what the old one shows and the new one also does not jive with what real-world transfers and other speed tests show. For example:

New test: http://testmy.net/ykwV7AJ.png
Old test: http://oldtestmy.net...ts/id-JM4DHSG16

Both of the above were done with the same machine, same browser, and approx. the same size. I ran two tests and both scored around the same range.

Other speed test sites show the following:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/2142423334.png
http://www.dslreports.com/im/102520030/50793.png
http://i.imgur.com/LnndA.png
http://i.imgur.com/iF0zN.png (this is from the US to Amsterdam. Small decrease due to TCP Setup time and ramp-up, but still pretty spot on!).

The delays I see with the new Testmy.net are just the transition between generating the test data to upload and then the actual upload itself. The test data takes nearly no time at all to make on Firefox and on the computer I normally use. My router shows an immediate saturation of the upstream to the uplink speeds I have the connection restricted to (to stop the 2000+ms lag monster) when running the test and the test runs in an acceptable duration for the speed, but the test isn't reflecting what I'm seeing.

Latency would be an awesome thing to see though!

[CA3LE]

I have. old.testmy.net in fact reports the upload properly for my connection. The new one always shows half of what the old one shows and the new one also does not jive with what real-world transfers and other speed tests show. For example:

New test: http://testmy.net/ykwV7AJ.png
Old test: http://oldtestmy.net...ts/id-JM4DHSG16

Both of the above were done with the same machine, same browser, and approx. the same size. I ran two tests and both scored around the same range.

Other speed test sites show the following:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/2142423334.png
http://www.dslreport...20030/50793.png
http://i.imgur.com/LnndA.png
http://i.imgur.com/iF0zN.png (this is from the US to Amsterdam. Small decrease due to TCP Setup time and ramp-up, but still pretty spot on!).

The delays I see with the new Testmy.net are just the transition between generating the test data to upload and then the actual upload itself. The test data takes nearly no time at all to make on Firefox and on the computer I normally use. My router shows an immediate saturation of the upstream to the uplink speeds I have the connection restricted to (to stop the 2000+ms lag monster) when running the test and the test runs in an acceptable duration for the speed, but the test isn't reflecting what I'm seeing.

Latency would be an awesome thing to see though!

Hi Smith6612, welcome to TMN!

So... there actually was a bug that would have caused that but it was resolved a few days ago.

Check it out...





... 4 kB/s fluctuation between tests. I just now ran those.

I think I know what's happening with you... the test you took on TestMy.net was using the East Coast (Washington D.C.) server. But old.testmy.net is hosted on the same server as the default server on TestMy.net. That would definitely explain the discrepancy.

Switch to the default server and they should line up...

... Latency as well as some other treats will be included in the version I'm building now. Hang in there, I'm just one guy over here... but I am banging it out.

My results to the other servers...

[Smith6612]

Makes sense. I'll test out the pages once again when I get home to see if things are any improved. It makes sense the old testmy.net site would be on the main server (Dallas?) as back then there was only one server if I remember correctly to test off of.

Thanks for the warm welcomes by the way

[Smith6612]

I just ran a few more tests. I'm afraid I may still be seeing this problem but it disappears when I press the "Re-Test" button at the top of the page. The tests are showing half of the upload rate i'm actually hitting. A 384KB file completed in around 4 seconds, whereas the test states my speed was around 340kbps which wouldn't upload that big of a file that quick.

I do notice something interesting here and I believe I discovered the issue I'm seeing with upload testing. I noticed that when I performed a test initially, the test would upload more data than it was supposed to. For example, selecting East Coast (closest to me) and then choosing 1.5MB of data would upload 2.7MB of data instead. If I press Re-test at the results page, the correct amount of data is uploaded and I see a proper result. I see this on each server, by the way.

Here's a video I uploaded to YouTube to demonstrate this:

.

Keep an eye on my line monitoring gadget. Notice, it will peg the upload at full speed but the first test always takes longer to run even if it got up to speed right away! The tally of data is showing extra data being uploaded, which I presume is skewing the results. I'm not quite sure what's happening here, but I am using Firefox 15 at the moment. I do NOT see this issue in IE, however. Google Chrome I'm not quite sure about nor Safari.

[CA3LE]

Wow, I haven't been this confused for a loooooooong time (that's a lot of O's) ... seriously dude, thanks.

I fixed the problem but I'm still unsure of what the hell was causing this to happen. Apparently my request for a binary character set was being ignored on the first request, once it had been loaded one time the browser then decided to acknowledge. I've never seen this happen... it may have something to do with a few server changes I just made. But I reverted those changes and I was still seeing the issue... maybe I made more changes than I can remember. Who knows. All I know is that I worked around it by using an alternate method to tell your browser what character set I want it to use... viola!

The thing is, if the browser interprets the data using the wrong character set the data being sent or received becomes jumbled... resulting in more data than was actually there... because it replaces 8 bit characters with it's own representation of the characters I intended... always resulting in more data. That's the best way I can explain it.

I probably wouldn't have noticed that for a while because it only occurred when cache and history was cleared... most likely, unless I was really paying attention I would have dismissed the lower first result as a fluke of the connection being used. So again, thanks... you're awesome. I truly rely on members like you to debug this stuff. I can debug until I look like a zombie... but it is never as good as what my users can do for me. I simply can't catch it all... at any given time I have 5 or more aspects I'm working on. By doing what you did you were my extra eyes, you did a very good job of illustrating the issue. I was following the tests as they processed (on your meter off to the left) and I was thinking, "Okay, we're at about an average of 610-650Kbps..." then a totally unexpected result. On re-test, the expected result. WHAT!

Like I said, I still have no idea what the root of this was. All I know is that it's fixed now. It HAS to have SOMETHING to do with the overhaul I did over the past 24 hours. Which increases the efficiency of how things load here... [spoiler]This is kinda tricky business because of the nature of this site. See, I want certain things to compress and cache but I obviously don't want that to happen during the tests. There is also A LOT of dynamic, ever changing content here. So I can't simply apply those changes to the server globally like most webmasters. I have to be more specific in my approach. ... yeah, those resources may load faster but they won't update information as they should and test results are effected. I have to balance that.[/spoil

Programming can definitely be a headache sometimes, you squeeze one end to get the result you want and it ballons out somewhere else. Actions can have unforeseen consequences... in seemingly unrelated areas. And as programming languages evolve it's ever changing. So something that doesn't have a negative side effect today... may later pop up and surprise you. But I love the challenge.

Thanks again, I hope you stick around... I've been building this my entire adult life and it's not even close to my vision. I don't think I'll ever be finished and I always need help from people with a keen eye. ... I can write all the necessary code but I can't build it alone.

SOPHIST PROMOTION!!

[Smith6612]

You're certainly welcome! I can confirm the test is fixed on my end now. It seems to be uploading the correct amount of data and the expected result is coming back too. Thanks for fixing that bug and also for the promotion! I'm also not seeing any more connection resets to the East coast server, but time will tell I suppose!

I do agree, programming can be a pain at times. I'm not a programmer but I do know HTML, PHP, Lua and C++ a little bit, but for working at a datacenter where you have to deal with an enslaught of programmers wondering why their code doesn't work on the servers properly, I'm sure I've seen quite a bit as it is

Edited by Smith6612, 29 August 2012 - 09:44 AM.

[CA3LE]

... Thanks for fixing that bug and also for the promotion! ...

I do agree, programming can be a pain at times. I'm not a programmer but I do know HTML, PHP, Lua and C++ a little bit, but for working at a datacenter where you have to deal with an enslaught of programmers wondering why their code doesn't work on the servers properly, I'm sure I've seen quite a bit as it is

No problem, it's what I do...
... see I sensed that you were knowledgeable. That title is well deserved and I don't just hand those out. Out of 86,000 registered members only 23 hold that title and only 35 have a higher title. I hope you stop by from time to time and provide your insite... lots of people with connection problems and we're much smarter and can solve much more as a collection of minds.

-D

[Smith6612]

Sounds good.

In case you're interested too I do hang around on sites such as DSLReports or the Verizon forums helping others out too, so I am pretty well known amongst DSL-related forums to help resolve connectivity problems. I'll gladly help folks out here when I have my free time as I do on other sites.

Edited by Smith6612, 30 August 2012 - 12:54 AM.

[CA3LE]

Sounds good.

In case you're interested too I do hang around on sites such as DSLReports or the Verizon forums helping others out too, so I am pretty well known amongst DSL-related forums to help resolve connectivity problems. I'll gladly help folks out here when I have my free time as I do on other sites.

Awesome, DSLReports has a lot of great members and information.

... I appreciate you sharing your knowledge. Not many people take the time to do that these days.

-D