Speed Tests Lately

[GamersCircle]

Since the pandemic, I have noticed that my results from Testmy.net have been impacted.  However other test sites that I use, have not been.  Any suggestions?

[nanobot]

What other sites are you using?

 

If it's anything that uses the 'speedtest.net' / 'Ookla' system, the reasons those are likely unaffected is because they use two techniques to make things look more favorable for your ISP:

 

1. They use geographically close servers, i.e. as physically close to your network as possible;

2. They typically throw away the two 5% extremes, i.e. the 5% worse and 5% best parts of the test;

 

The difference is TMN does neither.

 

Since the pandemic started, internet traffic is way up. People are streaming, gaming, and in-general downloading more. The core of the internet is seeing the effects of this, even if your local nodes are not.

[GamersCircle]

Speedof.me and Googl's Speed Test tool.

[nanobot]

So speedof.me definitely uses the first technique: pick the fastest server it can. I can't tell, but based on the results I saw it looks like it uses the second technique as well: throw "outliers" away.

 

I'm not sure on Google, but Google has such a wide network they probably geographically "multithread" by default. I'd have to confirm that one.

[GamersCircle]

More to my point, it has been about 4 weeks and the FL server that I have been using seems to be under reporting and the results from the other servers are about the same.  I mainly test the upload since I stream and I pick 4 other speed test sites [that do not use java] they are avg about the same on the upload.

 

I am just asking, if the internet pipes around https://testmy.net/ have been impacted.

[CA3LE]

15 hours ago, GamersCircle said:

More to my point, it has been about 4 weeks and the FL server that I have been using seems to be under reporting and the results from the other servers are about the same.  I mainly test the upload since I stream and I pick 4 other speed test sites [that do not use java] they are avg about the same on the upload.

I am just asking, if the internet pipes around https://testmy.net/ have been impacted.

 

I just tested to fl.testmy.net and got an expected upload result of 33.3 Mbps.

 

 

The internet pipes around everything have been impacted.  There could be congestion along a specific route from fl.testmy.net to you... but it may affect you and not me.  It could be with the provider on my end, it could be a peering network between my host and yours or it may be an issue on your ISPs end.  If you're only slower to the Florida server then it's probably a congested peer right now.  Given some time these types of issues are usually mitigated automatically by the hosts involved.  They usually have an idea that there's an issue and are already on the case.  

 

If you were seeing the issue across many of my servers you may have an issue closer to your ISP or home.

 

Networks are under additional stress with all of the people home right now.

 

Google has cut the default quality of youtube and Nest cams to try to cope.  Many other companies have taken similar measures.

 

Spectrum seems to be holding up averages.

[GamersCircle]

I do appreciate the input and I will be the first to admit, I am not at all an expert on how speed tests work.  I know that I avoid the ones that my fellow Twitch streamers have warned me away from and stick with those that give as accurate as possible; however let me share this and see if this sheds any light.

Around the 10th, my upload started to drop off. 

Using three other sites:

http://speedtest.googlefiber.net/ 479/23.2
https://speedof.me/  325.83/22.46
https://speedsmart.net/  507.06/24.47

The above three sites report my upload speed as I should be getting, all three were using a server in Atlanta vs Florida.  Is 5mbps worth all this?  For my stream to be 30fps, at 1280x720p , I use up about 10-12mbps , so I don't have too much wiggle room is my ISP , or Twitch or something else is having issues.

For the past couple of week, I have only been dropped twice and have not lost any frames, so usually that tells me that my upload is holding pretty good.  If I was to use the reported result from Testmy.net , then my stream would not be stable and I would have to make some adjustments.

That is why I am asked it there has been any issues with either the servers, the load on the services or something else that might impact my results when other sites are not reporting that I don't appear to be having any issues.