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I'm at my wits end. I live in the country and I am on a wireless internet service provider. We have a receiver on the roof that points to their tower etc. We are supposed to get 6mb of speed and we do as long as no one is using it. However, the minute we do anything...such as streaming netflix...it basically crashes to a very low speed and even Netflix then has to buffer etc. So the internet guys are telling me it is just Netflix. Except that even when I cut Netflix off and hook straight up to the POE and test, the speed still stays down. It won't go down until we stream or download, but it won't go back when we stop. In addition, we can only do one thing at a time. The provider we had before only had speeds of about 1mb but we could still browse the web while streaming or even stream on multiple devices. So any thoughts on why it crashes when we use it and doesn't come back up when we stop? I stopped Netflix (for testing purposes) over half an hour ago and I'm still running about 1mb off the POE. Thanks for your help!

I get the impression that they apply a tier-type throttling like satellite based providers, where data is initially delivered at full speed, but once a certain threshold is reached in a rolling interval (e.g. 1 hour), the connection is throttled. The next time your connection is at full speed, you could try capturing a graph of the throttling as follows: Go into the 'Download Test' tab above. If it says "Testing Global Multithread", click 'Classic Linear'. Ensure the 'Testing' server is nearby, otherwise click 'Servers', pick the nearest and go back into the 'Download Test' tab. For the 'Manual Test' drop-down, pick a fairly large size that you know will lead to throttling, e.g. '50MB'. Don't do anything online during the test and leave it to finish, e.g. start the test just before dinner. At the end of the test, you should see a graph like the following: If the line is fairly flat for a portion of the graph, then plummets to a much lower level for the rest of the test, then the culprit is most likely your ISP throttling after a certain amount of data is transferred over an hour or some other short interval. On the other hand, if the level remains fairly low or fluctuates all over the place throughout the graph, then it is most likely contention, such as your Wireless ISP being over-subscribed. In this case, repeat the test early in the morning to see how it compares. If the throughput is much better in the morning, then it's very likely you are connected to an over-subscribed tower.

That would raise my eyebrow... It's not your connection... it's the computer somehow. Your iPad has seen 55 Mbps in multithread. I'd also first go off of the classic single thread test, if that's faster... the connection is faster. I would suspect from your results that pages are loading slower. But it may not be noticeable. If it's not bothering you... don't worry about it. When it's the other way around and your multithread results are MUCH faster... then it's more cause for concern. Personally... it would drive me nuts until I figured out why it's doing that. Because it's not normal unless the computer (CPU) or browser can't keep up with the intensity of the multithread test. Like editorsean, I would question something that may be post processing the information in your browser. I've seen 3rd party software and malware screw with results like this. It will become apparent in the multithread test because the issue becomes compounded by the volume of elements. ... could be that the elements actually download quickly but each one takes a lot of time to initiate. If it lags the test... it lags your page loading. Here's from my 2011 iMac... same as I get on my Late 2014 5K iMac. Classic [db link] Multithread Pretty similar to your computer... you should have similar results. Well, at 50 Mbps that is. Your iPad has pulled better speed so we know that your router, modem and ISP aren't to blame.

As the multithread test involves transferring lots of small files, I wonder if it is taking an unusual amount of time to establish the individual connections or if something is briefly pausing the start of each individual transfer. For example, some antivirus products scan the data at the start of each transfer to check for known infections and this sometimes causes a brief pause before allowing further data to download. I had issues with AVG in the past causing unusually long delays when downloading files. If something is briefly delaying each connection, then this would likely cause the multi-threaded test to take longer as instead of a brief pause in a single transfer, there would be a brief pause in every individual transfer of the multi-threaded test, so with the 50 or so small files downloaded during the test, these pauses probably add-up more than any speed benefit of running batches of transfers simultaneously through the test. If you can easily disable your antivirus product or firewall, I would suggest trying the multi-threaded test again with these disabled. The issue could also be within the ISP if they are doing something like deep-packet inspection on each connection that is established.