mudmanc4

I have a edgemax lite router from ubiquiti
 
I also have another pfsense router running on my second network. (where I host my stuff)

At home, my main Internet connection is a DSL connection that gives a fairly consistent 3.9Mbps down and about 400Kbps up.  I tried a fixed wireless service about a year ago that was a complete disaster.  Lately I'm using a makeshift LTE based connection that fluctuates between 4Mbps and 45Mbps down and 10Mbps to 12Mbps up, going by TestMy.  As with phone cellular data connections, the IP address changes quite regularly, likely once or twice a day. 
 
In addition, while out and about, I run tests with my phone's data and similar also in places that offer free Wi-Fi.  I didn't realise just how many different IP addresses I clocked up until I was browsing through the Top 10 list for Ireland. 
 

I'm actually surprised to be in this list also as I certainly don't have the 10,000th fastest connection in Ireland, let alone the 10th.  Just a pity that most people in Ireland don't create an account to log their readings as that #7 rank indeed shows that the majority of tests here are not with a signed in user. 

+1 @CA3LE HOT DOG! I love it!

My 2 cents.
 
Mostly everybody treats their computers the same, regardless of whether they are at home or at work.
It's working don't touch it.
Instead, let's keep up on the PM, like something as simple as using a vacuum cleaner and just sucking at all the fan and vent locations.
NOT compressed air and blowing it all in.

First I am being brand spanking new to all of this.
Second I am trying to resolve a Netflix streaming issue for a neighbor who doesn't even know where to begin (I'm just slightly smarter). His dataset is hjb44.
Third I have been using TMN for three days now and love it. It showed the problem the very first run. His download was all over the map from 8Mb to 750Kb.
 
Instead of testing to San Francisco I would like to test to someplace closer, in fact I know the IP address of Netfix in Portland, but tracert quits after the third hop.
I live just 70 miles south, I know that has zero bearing on the issue; I am at the mercy of routing. Did a tracert to oregonlive.com (Portland newspaper) and it went to Seattle, to San Jose, then to Portland.
 
How do I go about using one of the Mercury Test Site? Is that portion of code even working?
Remember I warned you I am brand new at this.
 
Thanks, Fred

+1 @CA3LE HOT DOG! I love it!

Go to TestMy.net (homepage) and look under the database menu.  This option was disabled, I just enabled it for you.  
 


 
Once you enter a name you'll get an invite link that you can use to add members to the group.  Your group stats are then saved to an entirely separate database used for results comparisons.

Fool around and get to know the settings in the auto test.
There are many different variables you can use. Find the most frequent settings, and leave the tab in the browser open. Post back and let us know how things went.
 

Hi Sheila,
 Yes exactly. Many people simply reduce the window or open a new tab, or new browser window while the auto test is running.
 
Once you close the window, or tab the test is running in , the test will be terminated.

@Parado I can appreciate your frustrations, as I am sure so many of the rest of us can as well. Until we get a grasp as to how the ISP we are using is actually treating our connection, compared to what we expect, especially when it becomes difficult to brows, as many of us have had that issue.
 
Summer months for myself can be taxing, and I'm not always as available here as I'd like to be. It seems many people ignore working machines, which act as 'dust filters' , collecting anything which the fans run through. Once the heat of the season hits, electronics explain the importance of regular cleanings when the system thermal settings are hit.
 
Just left a small companies datacenter where no filtration system was utilized other than what went through the rest of the office, three racks of servers 3/4 filled was a daunting cleaning task. I would have pics but the HR gal was adamant about not letting it out. I literally filled three office waste bags from the shop vac out of the servers themselves, and a good bit more from under and around the racks. The duct had not been cleaned in a millennia, took me 10 minutes just to pull the packed filter out.
 
 

Well, I have been running automatic speed tests every 30 minutes for the past 5 hours (ever since the last time I power cycled), and everything seems to be working as expected.  A minor drop once, but I was also using the Internet on a different machine throughout the day, so that could easily explain that.
 
I guess I'll just have to keep monitoring it and see if it is really degrading over time or if it is happening all at once.  I assume it is over time because I've seen it at 20 Mbps, 15 Mbps, 10 Mbps, and even 2 Mbps.  Unfortunately, I only ever notice when something starts buffering or seems particularly slow... and by that time it is already crawling.
https://testmy.net/quickstats/Flaid
 
 
I don't know, I may have fought them quite a bit about their "activation fee" when I first signed up.  Since I had the equipment in hand, I wasn't sure why a tech needed to come out to the place and screw on the cable.  They gave me a lot of mumbojumbo about checking to make sure the line hasn't been damaged by wildlife, etc, etc...  When I asked to speak to the corporate office, they gave me $10 off.  And maybe flagged my account for being snarky (?)

No, I misunderstood your first message.  Logging in isn't the issue.
 
Make sure your computer isn't set to sleep, once it falls asleep the program does too.   -- it's very common.

It was working fine if you look at my log. I did delete some entries BTW..
 
I was switching between wired and WiFi and forcing some tests, which worked, but when I set it back to automatic, it runs the first test and no more. If you look at my log, you can see a string of 1 hour tests and then some forced tests.
 
Since I was running TMN at a friends house I pulled up your site at my house later to see the results and found the problem. So I tried running it at my house last night and only the first test worked.
 
Is this because I am trying to use TMN from two different IP addresses, with the same login,  and confusing the program?
 
Should I create him an account?   If I do that can I still look at his results and not upset the apple cart?
 
We are trying to resolve why his WiFi is dropping so low during prime time.
 
Thanks, Fred, fey42

My old Linksys router just recently died...treated me well for 7 years.

Went out and upgraded to the AC1900. Wasn't looking to spend too much, but I was impressed with the performance it was putting out. I'm always playing WoW and I rarely ever get connection issues and the range is also great. Does anyone else have the same router?

Hi CA3LE,
 
Thank you for reply and all the information - sorry I hadn't meant to be critical of the site - more a reflection of my frustration.
 
I have read your reply and appreciate all the hard work you have put into investigating issues raised.- thank you.  Will spend more time rereading  your reply and hopefully at some stage all will make sense.
 
Just a note in the tests I selected Melbourne being my closest city while you have selected Sydney
 
Best wishes,
 
Eric

For the sake of getting this off my mind I decided to go ahead and say it; as simple as I can to avoid a technical conundrum... 
 
As a network admin, one would surely be well aware results shown locally will not always match gateway results. We know packets are differentiated between one another on various levels throughout the route, once said packets reach any 'destination' (which there are many in it's travels) header bits may or may not be included / stripped, reordered ect. 
 
Therefore the possibility of catching an exact real time congruent match on throughput is very thin. As well as variations between calculations performed (after the fact) locally. (machine dependent latency / local filtering due to firewalls, routers, OS specific settings and load across a plethora of levels not to even mention QOS on more levels imaginable)
 
Stopping eons short of any technicals here, when we alter the very data we seek to explore in any way, or it's resulting computed findings, on any level, this defeats the very reason we initiated the test to begin with, since altered data within the flow is exactly what we were looking for to start with. And should be considered null and void.
 
Therefore we look for "real world" results. What is actually happening. The entire process as a whole while surfing, uploading or downloading, streaming, basically every day usage, never distorts , never alters or flaunts, it just is. 
 
If i look at myself in the mirror, and choose to not see the grey hairs on my chin in the morning, and try to convince myself they are still their original color, I would call that mental masturbation , not reality. 

Sorry, just found the combined test...
 

I'm on iinet cable. Promised speeds of 100Mbps down and 20 Mbps up. $80 per month

I sure would love to have that speed...
 
It does bug me also that most people I've encountered that sees a much lower speed on TestMy automatically puts the fault at TestMy instead of their ISP not being able to measure their connection as I've lost count of the number of times I've tried explaining why the two sites give such different results.  Here, I'm talking about speeds in the 50Mbps to 100Mbps region where TestMy may throw up 6 to 8Mbps while Speedtest.net throws up 40 to 50Mbps, such as what I see on my 4G connection from time to time.
 
The primarily reason is that Speedtest.net always runs its test multi-threaded and discards the 30% lowest readings during its test, while TestMy makes a linear connection to the Test server and factors in the entire test including dips in its test result.  So when my 4G connection is showing a test result of 6Mbps, I know that ~750KB/s is what to expect from individual downloads and generally that's the case, even when Speedtest.net claims I'm getting 40+Mbps.  This is especially important with streaming services as a Speedtest.net result of let's say 20Mbps does not necessarily mean that YouTube can stream video at 6Mbps for 1080p video. 
 
Another way to double-check your connection is with a download from Leaseweb's test file set.  Start the download of a large file (e.g. 1000MB sample) and wait a few seconds for the transfer rate figure settles.  Multiply this figure by 8 to convert to Mbps and you should get what your ISP is sustaining in this transfer.  For me, this generally matches up with what I get with the TestMy UK and Germany servers nearest to me and it's very unlikely that the bottleneck along the route is at Leaseweb's end. 

@FriskyMoose
A site first must be blacklisted, which would mean no access what so ever. And this has nothing to do with throughput.
Testmy.net has been around since 2001
 
Domain Name: TESTMY.NET Registrar: GODADDY.COM, LLC Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 146 Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com Referral URL: http://www.godaddy.com Name Server: ERIN.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM Name Server: KIP.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM Status: clientDeleteProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientDeleteProhibited Status: clientRenewProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientRenewProhibited Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited Status: clientUpdateProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientUpdateProhibited Updated Date: 02-apr-2016 Creation Date: 09-oct-2001 Expiration Date: 09-oct-2024  
In fact that is how I found out about testmy.net, through the ISP I had at the time , they as in (the head network engineer) recommended that I come over here and get a real world test result.

Despite all the hype over 4G these days, I recently decided to go back to 3G with my mobile provider.  What's really surprising is just how much bandwidth they can squeeze even over 3G as I remember when 4G first launched, the maximum speed I've seen with any 3G provider was about 8Mbps, with speeds of 3Mbps or less being more common.
 
The following is a speed test I conducted just a short while ago with my mobile operator Meteor in Ireland.  This is HSPA+ (3G), which I'm paying €10/month for and has a 7.5GB cap.  Sure I could pay €10 more for 4G and double the cap, but I wasn't even getting 1/10th this with my previous mobile provider Three on their 4G network!:
 

 
I would be curious to to see if anyone else is getting anything better with 3G.  Even the Vodafone 4G network here which is hyped for delivering 100Mbps results on Ookla was only delivering about 20mbps at times with TestMy when I tried their network for a month back in January. 
 
While many areas still give about 10Mbps with Meteor, for me it's still fast enough for pretty much everything I do with my smartphone, including YouTube in HD. 

I also notice the flash test was taking a reading less than 50 miles from your location. Which is like testing your ISP itself, or within or close to your house as possible.
The tests from ookla are many times living on high level nodes running on ports which harbor very little to no traffic, the antithesis of real world downloads.
 
When testing at this proximity, we exclude most real world results. This type of testing as ookla less than 50 miles from your location , also fails to show the peering of the ISP, which is the strength and availability of connected networks.
 
You might do well finding more information , such as running a traceroute to the testmy.net server your testing to/ from, and comparing this to the distance of the flash based test.

@Gabe1972 I understand.
There appears to be caching going on somewhere between the ISP and his computer.
Have him delete the individual results in his database here at testmy.net 
 
Select the test result from the checkbox on the right, then hit the red 'X'

mudmanc4,
I gave him the suggestion in the Hughesnet thread and explained it step by step.  We'll see what happens.  Thanks for the help.