massive DL speed differences with different TMN servers?

[mrhuge]

I just joined the forum in hopes of getting help with my speed problems (mostly DL speed sucking). I live in Seattle, have Comcast HSI with Blast!, I think I'm supposed to be getting something like 25Mbps/5Mbps. I have a Netgear WNR3500L router and a Motorola Surfboard 5100 cable modem, plus a Vonage VOIP box hanging off the router. There are several Windows machines (one W8, all others W7) connected via ethernet or Wi-Fi, plus one Android box, a Home-Theater receiver and blue-ray player, both connected to a Gigabit switch. When I've been testing speeds I've tried to make sure that nothing much is going on outside of the one PC I'm testing on, but I haven't been religious about it.

I was repeatedly getting 20-25Mbps DL on Speedtest.net, but 3-6Mbps on TMN. That seemed fishy...

I had various ideas of what to try (resetting the router & modem, connecting my PC directly to the modem, running some tweaks, etc), but I thought I'd run a bunch of tests first to set a baseline and to make sure they were consistent. I decided to try the different servers to see how much difference they would make, not expecting much since my speed was already coming in so slow. This is what I'm getting after a few tries each:

(I hope posting this chart works - if not I'll post it some other way)

Wed Jan 09 2013 @ 6:28:54 pm SEA 17.8 MB 24.4 Mbps 3.05 MB/s f2hiRZo

Wed Jan 09 2013 @ 6:28:11 pm AMS 608 kB 964 Kbps 121 kB/s Tz3D21x

Wed Jan 09 2013 @ 6:27:03 pm USA 3.8 MB 4.64 Mbps 580 kB/s Hsqfvnt

Wed Jan 09 2013 @ 6:26:06 pm USA 4.6 MB 5.59 Mbps 698 kB/s Juw7oWO

Wed Jan 09 2013 @ 6:09:42 pm SEA 16.6 MB 22.66 Mbps 2.83 MB/s ms2Qx8N

Wed Jan 09 2013 @ 5:57:59 pm SEA 23.1 MB 23.53 Mbps 2.94 MB/s YeXopnP

Wed Jan 09 2013 @ 5:56:38 pm SEA 22.4 MB 24.66 Mbps 3.08 MB/s 7DOHiEZ

Wed Jan 09 2013 @ 5:55:58 pm SEA 20.4 MB 23.21 Mbps 2.9 MB/s ypYgjQN

Wed Jan 09 2013 @ 5:54:56 pm AMS 1 MB 1.56 Mbps 194 kB/s ar80vg3

Wed Jan 09 2013 @ 5:53:59 pm AMS 640 kB 1.04 Mbps 130 kB/s VwfLThm

Wed Jan 09 2013 @ 5:53:24 pm USA 2.7 MB 3.8 Mbps 475 kB/s G69RVPg

Wed Jan 09 2013 @ 5:53:04 pm USA 2.7 MB 4.12 Mbps 515 kB/s Jy3BX8V

Wed Jan 09 2013 @ 5:40:35 pm USA 4.4 MB 6.17 Mbps 771 kB/s bdDGIYS

(I messed up the chart a little - "USA" means either Dallas or Boston I think)

The three numbers in each line are the size of the file tested, the DL speed in Mbps and the DL speed in MBps ... So when connecting to the Seattle server I get DL speeds from 22-25Mbps, with Dallas/Boston I get 4-66Mbps, and Amsterdam gives me horrible 1-1.5Mbps speeds.

I wouldn't expect to see such a wide range - some discrepancy, sure, but not a 24:1 ratio between Seattle and Amsterdam.

This isn't normal is it? Is it indicative of a routing problem? Is there anything I can do about it? Or should I really expect that downloading a big file from Europe will take ~20 times as long as from a server 20 miles away?

thanks...

mrhuge