Mike Hammett

Not all and I'd say probably most ISPs don't implement bursting.

 

I do agree that a longer speedtest.net test would be helpful.

 

 

Many ISPs discount the credibility of speedtests. I, for one, encourage them to learn what they reveal. Yes, some of the hosts may be crappy, however, the poor tests that are not the fault of a crappy host indicate piss poor performance either at that ISP or beyond that ISP. They say they aren't responsible for what's beyond them. I say they are. They need to get their upstreams to fix the issue or switch upstreams.

Your result at speedtest.net is only 4ms from the server.  TestMy.net is routing you across the Internet to locations where real websites are hosted.  Not on the edge of your providers network.  Of course your faster if you don't really go out to the Internet.  It's like downloading from within your own network.  That's NOT your Internet speed.  We should call that your ultimately ideal situation speed. 

 

The multithread test is designed to be harder.  Just now I ran a normal download test and CPU maxed at 100% (one of my cores).  I ran a multithread test and hit 275% (nearly 3 cores).  But I've found that it's not the same case for Mercury tests (which are also multithread).  A Mercury test vs netflix.com I saw a peak of 110%.  So you can multithread with Mercury and it's not quite as CPU intensive. Always keep in mind that TestMy.net isn't just an Internet test, it's also a test of the client computer and in the case of Mercury it's also a test of the server. I give you many different ways to test because your Internet can be delivered in many different ways.

 

You don't win popularity contests by telling people they have food in their teeth.  But they usually appreciate it in the end.  Trust the results, they have to be affected by something... results are only low here for good reason.   Having said that... you're pulling >100 Mbps consistently, that's pretty sweet.  How much do you pay and what do you expect for that price? .. what are they quoting your speed at?

None of these are on the same network. They are all out on the public Internet. This is from my desk at my client. It's an enterprise-grade connection. Cogent\Zayo SLA backed service. I'm not privy to what they pay, but being SLA backed, if they don't get their full gigabit 24/7 (obviously there's other things using the circuit either at my client or the servers), they're due a credit or can escape the contract.

 

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3967940640

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3967943227

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3967946468

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3967947756

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3967949382

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3967951961

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3967953595

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3967966426

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3967968134

 

Nine different servers on nine different networks that are all less than 10 ms and are not on-net. I could keep going to additional servers, but I don't feel that's necessary to debunk the idea that I'm running it to an internal, on-net server. Some of them are even a three hour drive away.

 

I'll try the Mercury tests and I'll try my laptop which has a lot more CPU later this week. Maybe I can get them to get me a bigger machine. Even though it has 16 GB of RAM, it's getting long in the tooth.

 

I'm not here to trash one methodology or to promote another. I'm just trying to find the test that's the most accurate the most of the time. I do agree on the single thread vs. multithread.

 

Seeing the latency during the test would be nice. I wish there was something like Cisco's IP-SLA that one could use for these. While the test was occurring, there's realtime loss, latency and jitter measurements. Great for finding connections that falter under load.

 

 

I'm actually involved in a few projects to increase throughput and decrease latency in many locations on the Internet.

I can fill the GigE port with iPerf, so I'm sure the hardware is capable.

 

The rest of what you said doesn't really make sense. What I read it as was, "This test just throws some numbers out there that aren't really relevant to anything." However, I assume that's not what you meant.

*nods* Just looking for something that's accurate for the general public to use.

 

I'll try next week comparing my Core2Quad with my i7.

I read the guide explaining why speedtest.net reports higher speeds than testmy.net.

 

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3962390815

 

vs

 

https://testmy.net/db/OPnq5Eg(multithread)

 

That's over 3x the difference.

 

That seems to be more than the existing explanations can justify.