Hi All, I start to get the picture.

[ticktock58]

I have just discovered Testmy.net and have been doing some first tests which are confirming my intuitive feelings regarding speed.

 

Some background.

I live in a rural location just beyond the range of hi speed service by BT (British Telecom). BT do not intend to re route my cables as there are only six subscribers at this location. I was getting typically 9mb down and 0.5mb up. I had tried several ISPs, my last was Plusnet (BT!).

 

I gave up and have subscribed to 3 with a mobile sim card in a static router.

My speed test results using Ookla which was my standard are excellent, typically 40mb and 10mb for upload. However, it is obvious that it is taking much longer for data to transfer in a meaningful way, as streaming TV on my television often drops out and usually has long buffer pauses. Utube has a black screen to start with of some ten or more seconds.

 

My test with Speedof.me confirms my feeling that something is slowing me down. I have a latency of 2047ms!! not the tens of ms that I have been seeing with the other testers. Can I get latency figures from Testmy.net?

 

Anyway, hi everyone.

 

 

[CA3LE]

Hi @ticktock58 -  welcome!

 

Here's your latency at TestMy.net

 

https://testmy.net/rt/ticktock58

 

It's called response time here but it's roughly the same thing as ping.  I'm measuring the round trip time it takes for you to respond to a request and then cut that in half.  So it is measuring your latency but for some reason I decided to make it even more confusing and call it something else.

 

Looks like you're testing against uk.testmy.net and using Windows.  Open command prompt and type ping uk.testmy.net (how to ping)

 

You're very close to London, right?  ~78ms seems high for being that close.  Try also testing some TestMy.net mirrors. 

 

If you hover over the name it will show the server address in the tooltip...
 

(by the way, I'm not on a very good connection right now.  Latency is all of the place because uploads are maxing out the connection right now.)

 

...if you'd like the most accurate latency numbers ping the address of the server your testing against in command prompt.  While logged in as you test and surf around TMN, your response time will be continually tested each time you load a new page.  Even when you're not running a speed test.  You can see it loading at the top of your page anywhere outside of the forum.

 

Here's the connection I'm on right now, comparing terminal (command prompt) ping to the numbers reported by TMN Response Time test.

 

 

Not a surprise, it's a 1Mbps upload connection, I disconnected my Pixel from wifi and everything started running better. ...but still pretty jumpy.  Would look good if it was ~48ms and had little to no variation.

 

(Phoenix, AZ to Colorado Springs, CO)

 

Here's my connection at home and going from Colorado to Dallas is further.

 

Probably much further than you are from London right now.

[ticktock58]

Thanks for your reply CA3LE plenty there for me to chew on.

Nice useful site thanks.

Paul.

[Sean]

If you open a YouTube video in your PC browser, you can check roughly what download speed YouTube is receiving.  Just right-click on the playing video and click "Stats for Nerds".  Let the video play for about a minute and you'll see a traffic screen similar to below.  YouTube needs a minimum of 4 to 5 Mbps sustained to play at 1080p.

 

I am on the Irish 3 network here in Ireland.  Here the YouTube throughput is similar to what I get on TestMy:

 

[ticktock58]

Hi Sean,

 

Thanks for your info.

Did that and got the attached screen shot after a about a minute.

Not sure how to read it yet but will see what I can get.

 

 

What started me off on this chase is the fact that if I select a utube video to look at I get a black screen for something like 20 seconds before I get to see anything.

 

Cheers,

Paul.

[Pgoodwin1]

I just tried opening a YouTube video on my iPad Air 2 and it only took about 1 second to load and start playing. I was outside on my deck at the fringe of my wireless range. I got RTs of 70 to 200 mS and download speeds of 7.5 to 21.5 Mbps out there. 

 

I typically get 200 Mbps inside the house and RTs of typically between 50 & 100 mS. I’m in the US using Spectrum

 

@CA3LE - the time-of-day showing for the RT is one hour later than the time for the download test results.

[ticktock58]

Hi, Thanks for your input.

I was on the end of a to long line and I am now using a 4G wireless connection.

My speed tests are much better than the old cable connection but my actual performance is much slower. I have a near neighbour who is on the same scheme as me. I must first see what sort of results he is getting.

 

Paul.

[CA3LE]

11 hours ago, Pgoodwin1 said:

@CA3LE - the time-of-day showing for the RT is one hour later than the time for the download test results.

 

Fixed, thank you!  Still need to make that a global variable.   

[Sean]

Going by that stats for nerds screen, YouTube is receiving plenty of throughput going by its measurement.  If it's correct, 26Mbps is enough for even 4K streaming, not that I suggest trying that over 4G. 

 

The long delay is likely a problem with the CDN it is trying to connect to.  YouTube first tries connecting to a nearby CDN such as within the Three network.  If that fails, YouTube will then stream from another CDN. 

 

The first thing I suggest is try setting the DNS on that computer to Google's:

1. Right-click the Wi-Fi icon in your taskbar and then "Open Network & Internet Settings"
2. Click "Change adapter options"
3. In the list of networks, Right-click the WiFi icon and then "Properties"
4. Click "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)" then click "Properties"
5. Choose the option "Use the following DNS server addresses:".
6. Enter 8.8.8.8 for the preferred and 8.8.4.4 for the alternative.
7. Click OK to both screens.

 

Try playing a few YouTube videos to see if they start any quicker.  If not, you can undo these steps by following them, but choose "Obtain DNS server address automatically" for step 5.

 

Another thing you can try is run the utility DNSQuerySniffer, which you can download here.  Choose your Wi-Fi Interface in the list and let it run as Administrator (required to sniff traffic).  Start playing a YouTube video and check the DNSQuerySniffer screen for any hosts ending in "googlevideo.com".  The following shows an example from my end:

 

 

If any of the googlevideo hosts have a red dot, this indicates a failed look-up. You can try also pinging the IP addresses under the 'A' column to see if they reply, particularly for the last googlevideo.com one it shows when YouTube is still at the black screen. 

Edited July 30, 2019 by Sean
Missed some info

[Pgoodwin1]

20 hours ago, ticktock58 said:

...... I must first see what sort of results he is getting.

That’s a good thing to do - and info from any others in the area

[ticktock58]

Thanks Sean and PG1. I am waiting to hear from my neighbour and have just got in soaked to the skin so I will not be trying your suggestion Sean this evening. Thanks both for your interest.

Whilst computers don't frighten me I am rather low on the knowledge side so as you can see I am baffled by what is going on.

As I new see it, what's the point of a speed test if most of the testers give a good result but the actual result is poor. As I say ignorance on my part. 

I will of course report back, I am intrigued.

paul.

[ticktock58]

I have been away from the PC for some time as you can see. My actual speed is very slow but as I said earlier most speed tests give me good speed bar for a high Ping.

I am getting my signals via 4G on 3.

I have played with the DNA settings as suggested earlier but no improvement.

 

Paul.