What Range Of Speeds Should I Expect

[Alan C]

Hi Folks, I am new here although I have done many speed tests on my Wireless system. I get a wide range of speeds but I think they are too low too often. I have little idea of what range I could reasonably expect. I have a good Dell Desk top running Vista Home Premium. My ISP (can I name it here?) provides me, and charges me, a service rated at up to 1.5 Mb/s. Most of my tests show around .2 to .6 Mb/s download speed. Very rarely do I see over 1Mb/s. Upload is usually about half the download speed as seems reasonable.

The customer service is good and they have tried hard to assist me. They agree, a bit reluctantly, that my speeds seem a bit on the low side but usually suggest I have a computer problem. I have tried resetting the antenna (unplugging the power for about 5 minutes); starting the computer in Safe Mode with Networking and restarting the computer. I have also removed the router from the system. Sometimes a subsequent test does show an improvement but it never stays high for more than about 30 minutes and I have not found any consistency in the changes. I think this is very bad and have even, briefly, considered reverting to dial-up. I would appreciate some idea of what ranges of speeds other Wireless Internet users get and how often the speed changes significantly. Maybe I need to go shopping for other providers. Thanks Alan C

[zalternate]

Who's your provider(sounds like you are on a wireless ISP) and can you paste your latest speed test here.

[Alan C]

Who's your provider(sounds like you are on a wireless ISP) and can you paste your latest speed test here.

OK. I guess naming names is OK. Xplornet is my ISP. I must say that I have been very pleased with their responses, just not so much the results so far.

Some tests I did his morning using speedtest (Oops!)

3:55 18 Apr 10 Normal start

Ping 84ms. Down .13Mb/s Up .43 Mb/s

Speedtest 9:19 19 Apr 10 Normal start

Ping 76 ms: Down .12 Mb/s; Up .32 Mb/s

Speedtest 9:31 19 Apr 10 Antenna reset

Ping 611 ms: Down .27 Mb/s; Up .29 Mb/s

Speedtest 9:40 19 Apr 10 Safe Start

Ping 60 ms: Down .45 Mb/s; Up .37 Mb/s

Speedtest 9:45 19 Apr 10 Normal start

Ping 85 ms: Down 1.1 Mb/s; Up .23 Mb/s

A recent test using testmynet :

Testmy.net 12:46 16 Apr 10 Normal start

Down, 1.2 Mb/s; Up .311 Mb/s

The 1 plus Mb/s are much less common than shown above. .2 to .7 is what I usually get.

[zalternate]

I kind of thought it was Xplornet by the quoted throttling. Have you read the below from Xplornet?

A variable on if your tower is near capacity for bandwidth/users on the AP(access point).

And what frequency unit are you on? 900Mhz or 2.4Ghz. they can be subject to various interference. Xplornet does have a 3.5Ghz licensed frequency that is a lot better if available on your tower.

Note the throttled(sustained) speeds. As Xplornets 'up to' speed is actually a 'burst' speed.

http://www.xplornet.com/legal/xplornet-traffic-management-policy.aspx

What is Xplornet's Fixed Wireless Traffic Management Policy?

The Traffic Management policy that applies to Xplornet fixed wireless Internet access service is based on the amount of data you can send (upload) and receive (download) in a given session. A session is the time it takes to complete an activity like downloading a web page, downloading a song or uploading a photo. You may burst up to the top package speed for a certain period of time. Once you reach the predefined usage limit, you will continue downloading or uploading at a sustained speed until the activity is completed.

Each of our service packages has a usage limit. When you exceed the limit of your package, the download and upload speeds will be reduced to 20-40% of your package's top speed. This speed reduction is dependent on which package you have.

Most basic Internet activities such as web browsing, text based email, online banking and social networking seldom trigger the Traffic Management policy. Some more intense Internet activities like downloading a song or streaming video may cause the Traffic Management policy to take effect.

Examples

Below are two examples to help you understand how the fixed wireless Xplornet Traffic Management policy works.

Example #1 - Downloading software:

You are on the Xpress package (top download speed is up to 3.0 Mbps) and you want to download the latest version of Adobe Reader which is 31 MB. The first 3.5 MB will download at the maximum rate capable with the customer's modem and the remaining 27.5 MB of the file will download at the sustained rate of 700 Kbps. Once the software has finished downloading, the Traffic Management policy will reset before a new session begins.

Example #2 - Downloading a song:

You are on the Zoom package (top download speed is up to 1.5 Mbps) and you want to download one 4 MB song. The first 1.5 MB will download at the maximum rate capable with the customer's modem and the remaining 2.5 MB will download at 600 Kbps. Once the song has finished downloading, the Traffic Management policy will reset before a new session begins.

[xs1]

Your in canada right? Well, just for shiggles and gitts ..... give this a shot for me & see what you come up with ... Just to rule out a bad route factor to testmy.net

http://speedtest.cogeco.net/

or

http://speedtest.primus.ca/

[Alan C]

Hello again, I had tested with Speedtest just before I read your note. I got .79 Mb/s download and .82 Mb/s upload. I was fairly happy with that. Using your primus link I got 1249 kb/s download and 1688 kb/s upload. If this continues I will be happy. I do have a 1.5 Mb/s service (nominally) and I am, indeed in Canada, just outside of Ottawa. I expect it is sheer coincidence but my more recent (since I started whining here) speeds I have measured are significantly better than earlier!!

Thanks also to zalternate for the information about the throttling. If my service reduced to only about 1/3 of the rated maximum I would be very happy. It is very often much slower than that. I never download music or movies but do send and receive photographs and short videos quite often. It seems that I must either accept what I get or try and find another supplier. Thanks for the advice. Alan C

[zalternate]

Hello again, I had tested with Speedtest just before I read your note. I got .79 Mb/s download and .82 Mb/s upload. I was fairly happy with that. Using your primus link I got 1249 kb/s download and 1688 kb/s upload. If this continues I will be happy. I do have a 1.5 Mb/s service (nominally) and I am, indeed in Canada, just outside of Ottawa. I expect it is sheer coincidence but my more recent (since I started whining here) speeds I have measured are significantly better than earlier!!

Thanks also to zalternate for the information about the throttling. If my service reduced to only about 1/3 of the rated maximum I would be very happy. It is very often much slower than that. I never download music or movies but do send and receive photographs and short videos quite often. It seems that I must either accept what I get or try and find another supplier. Thanks for the advice. Alan C

With some tests, they may not account for when the throttle kicks in. So if the test is only during the burst, you get a skewed result. Thats what is great about being able to choose a larger test size.

Bandwidth Monitor. Free version. To be able to see when a throttle kicks in, as the graph line will drop to a much lower rate at a noted amount of MB transfer.

http://download.cnet.com/Bandwidth-Monitor/3000-2085_4-10521410.html?tag=mncol

[Alexandros]

With some tests, they may not account for when the throttle kicks in. So if the test is only during the burst, you get a skewed result. Thats what is great about being able to choose a larger test size.

Bandwidth Monitor. Free version. To be able to see when a throttle kicks in, as the graph line will drop to a much lower rate at a noted amount of MB transfer.

http://download.cnet.com/Bandwidth-Monitor/3000-2085_4-10521410.html?tag=mncol

You can also check the internet connection by pinging. If you are good in networking then you can ping by using command prompt else visit the site http://ip-details.com/ to find the ip address and ping it from the site http://www.whoisxy.com/. this site will helps you to send and receive data to find the internet connection.