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That would not solve the issue, and would essentially give you a single average number that is better left as a set of numbers for more information regarding routing. There are two speed graphs that I think are most important for an internet connection: a graph of speed tests to an internal server (within the ISPs network) to determine the average and variance during the day/week/year/millennium of your connection to your ISP; and a graph of speed tests to a server outside the ISPs network, to find out how good your ISP is at handling that. Latency tests can also be very useful. You are right in that a single server can be hampered by a single bad network, but it does point to a problem that is not supposed to exist, and will affect many more servers which you want to interact with.

Hi. I just want to say I have been using testmy.net for along time with my different comcast internet package and speed tests. finally registered!

I may be wrong, but from what I can see... There's no doubt that testmy.net does real-world bandwidth testing; and, that their ISP, theplanet.com, has several high quality interconnects to other popular networks. However, I've noticed that there still can be lower quality intermediary networks along certain routes that can be congested (depending on when you do the bandwidth test). So, while the general bandwidth for both the user's ISP network and testmy.net's ISP network can be very fast, there can still be a slower, congested intermediate network (specific to the route between testmy.net and the user's network) that can be the bottleneck. This can give you a lower speed rating than what the speed the user would generally see under any other circumstance. The only way I can see testmy.net to give an accurate real-world speed test wouldbe to average out at least a few different speed tests with servers in different geographical locations.

First, welcome back! Been a while since you've logged in. One of the first 1000 members, I'm glad to see you're still visiting. Under certain circumstances the progress bar can lag... which doesn't effect the outcome of the test. I've seen this on VNC and on Android 2.x phones. When I've seen this it never pauses, then turns into a fluid progress bar (meaning that it moves smoothly). It will pause then JUMP... as if the browser couldn't keep up with the java used to update the progress. Regardless of how the progress bar updates the flow of data is uninterrupted. On the other hand you might have an issue that's causing this. If it pauses, moves, pauses... then the bar fluidly moves for the remainder of the test... I'd bet that there is something wrong. First thing I would check would be MTU. You're on Bell South, which is DSL (right?)... PPPoE. Which means that the optimal MTU for your computer and router is 1492. Optimal MTU for cable Internet and most other providers is 1500. When I was on DSL for a while I was having a similar issue... my equipment was configured for my previous cable connection (I'm back on cable and don't miss fiber DSL at all, okay... the upload was pretty awesome. My connection on cable is much more stable and is especially much better for gaming. Plus, my nick is CA3LE... lol.) and changing the MTU resulted in a drastic difference. Like night and day. Check this out... CA3LE March to April 2010 -- you can see where I fixed it and stabilized my connection. (note that some of the results in that query are unrelated... TMN didn't have the filtering and identifying options back then so I can't narrow the search down to exactly the related tests. Only pay attention to the Qwest.net results). It's a very important setting and can have a profound impact on your performance. An easy way to tune your TCP stack in windows is with Speedguide.net's TCP Optimizer. But your router may also need to be configured correctly for PPPoE, it may have an MTU setting or may just ask you what type of connection you have. If you're coming from a different provider it's pretty common for this to be incorrectly set. Here's a topic very similar to this one... Hanging while testing - I think his issue was resolved with a new NIC. So that could be the issue too. A little side information, TestMy.net is different than the rest. If you test on the majority of other Internet speed tests out there you may not see this effecting your results... because they've designed their tests to ignore the worst part of your results. I personally don't understand the mindset behind that, it shows where their interests lie... hint, they don't work for your best interest. TestMy.net on the other hand just calls it how it sees it. If there is a pause in the flow of information, it's reflected in the results. Say that you download a 10MB file and it takes 10 seconds. Let's say that there is an extra 2 second pause at the beginning of that download. You might not notice it because once the download starts to flow it's going fine...... but does that mean that the 2 second pause never happened? Hell no! Even though it might have happened without you noticing, it still happened. In turn effectively dropping your speed for that download by about 17%. Now, let's say that you were downloading only 1 MB at the same speed, then the issue is compounded and effectively drops your speed by about 67%. I've had users, especially satellite users, that tell me that I should design the test to start the time after the speed has picked up... but wouldn't that defeat the purpose of the test? If your connection has pauses and blips, that's important information to know. It's the reason that you came here... right? You might stabilize at 8 Mbps (in our theoretical scenario) but that doesn't mean that's your real speed. Issues that cause that kind of problem make a HUGE impact on browsing speed, VoIP, gaming... etc. Ignoring that crucial information is exactly what most speed tests do, something TestMy.net will never do.

very well put RTB

Right on, I knew about the test thing I think it is kinda bullshit that they would go boost over stability Anyway its fine I just wondered @Thread Thanks guys

As Ninja states, they all over sell. As I've stated elsewhere in TestMy, all of them do it so they've collectively used overstated specs on their speeds. They're not afraid of getting sued, because it has become the norm, and on their instruments, that's what you get, regardless of the reality of it. I typically get only about 80% (8Mbps as measured here) of what they tell me I'm supposed to be getting for download speed (10 Mbps min), and only about 1/3 what their speed measuring tools show (>20Mbps).

If 30Mbps is the boost your supposed to be getting then no you wouldn't see that on the test because the tests are setup to run a bit longer then that lasts to get a stable real world reading of your connection if you want to test and see it you can specifically choose a very small download size say 6-12MB and you might see it then

While I am NO expert on this matter, Let me offer you my 2 cents. Cable Internet has been over selling for a long time. You share your connection with other users, How many I am not sure. There is only so much bandwidth you and your fellow users can have. They keep upping the speeds without the ability or the actual bandwidth to allow everyone on that same connection to have that much speed. Kinda like the auto bon in Germany. Sure everyone can go as fast as they want. Problem is, So many people are on that road, its impossible to go as fast as you want.

Actually the majority doesn't use ad blockers you will find a good percentage of people who don't even know what adblockplus is and for the server its not one giant server but clusters of servers I'd imagine Google runs thousands of servers a crossed the globe to serve all of its content

Vista was introduced under his watch and it really sucked!