Satellite broadband actual v published speeds

[tdewhurst]

I live in a rural area with very poor broadband via BT line and no cable service.

Satellite broadband offered 20Mbps download speed which is like heaven for me. £35 per month for 20gb at 20meg from Avonline using Tooway seemed like a reasonable deal.

However, having deployed my satellite solution over a year ago, my download speed has never exceeded 6Mbps with a 'normal' reading of around 2-3Mbps. This is consistent across all speed testing sites/apps.

Avonline support said they didn't trust speed testing sites and directed me to the speed test facility on their own site. Lo and behold, their website speed test shows something like 18-20Mbps.

Am I missing something?

By the way, I carried out speed tests by hot wiring the Tooway modem to my desktop without going through the wireless network.

Hope you can help

[mudmanc4]

Good base idea to wire direct and eliminate any latency in wireless. 

 

Of course the sat corp does not 'trust' any other source than itself, they are not in the slightest concerned with real life actual throughput on your account. They simply insure you have 'a connection' to the exit node, or their sister peer. 

 

I dare to bet if we glanced at the sat fine print, it would claim 'up to speeds' 

 

In other words, in a perfect word, perfect alignment, not oversold beam or any sun spots, you might reach what we claim is your max cap throughput. 

[Sean]

It's quite likely their own speed test forces that throughput over the satellite link to check if your connection can reliably receive the rated throughput to rule out data loss from a poor signal such as the dish going off alignment. If this is the case, then normal data such as from third party speed tests would face contention and give a more realistic throughput.

One more test you could try is play a popular YouTube HD video (e.g. chart music video in 1080p), right-click the video and bring up the "Stats for nerds". It will show the actual throughput you're getting as the video plays. The popular videos are generally played from fast servers, so if it struggles to play in 1080p or even 720p, it is more likely a contention issue than with YouTube's server.

On the other hand, 2Mb to 3Mb is actually pretty good for satellite, especially if you get that at peak time such as in the evenings. Most satellite ISPs are heavily over-subscribed and can just manage basic web-browsing at peak times, even those claiming to offer up to 10Mb or more.

[Lopejc]

I have hughesnet basic plan and have had issues with very slow speeds and 15 to 18 seconds just to load Google.com for over 3 months. Even during my free download zone from 2 to 7 am mst lately I am getting 70 to 50 Kilobits/ps when I would normally get 3.5 Mbps. Have complained to deaf ears and ran test and all I get is lies. Heard Excede is offering faster speeds and still have free download zone for same price.

[tdewhurst]

Thanks mate. I tried this and never got as high as 2Mbps. Mostly hovered between 1-1.5meg.

Same as the speed tests (apart from Avonline's)

I fully get your cynicism. The thing is, in the fine print in my contract, they 'guarantee' an average of 6meg download.

The problem I have, of course, is that despite all my tests being much lower than 6meg their test shows 18meg.