I have 20MBPS but only 8MB on speedtest?
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D3ath3nat0r
United States163 Posts
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haduken
Australia8267 Posts
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Genome852
United States979 Posts
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lu_cid
United States428 Posts
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WarChimp
Australia943 Posts
On December 07 2010 12:49 Genome852 wrote: Mbps = megabit per second which is not megabyte per second. Unless you meant otherwise. Generally ISP will give you your speed in bits, when websites like speedtest measure, I believe they measure in bytes. There is 8 bits in every byte. | ||
Yoshi Kirishima
United States10357 Posts
8 Mb = 1 MB Also try this: http://reviews.cnet.com/internet-speed-test/ I've used both and think this CNET is better/more accurate. When selecting the testing location you can just press "Home," I don't think it matters. Note: this tests in Bits (b) not Bytes (B) | ||
Kolvacs
Canada1203 Posts
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Sasquatch
Canada126 Posts
It even says on Qwest's site that it offers "Connection speeds up to 20 Mpbs downstream/up to 896 Kbps upstream." Not that your speed is guaranteed to be 20 Mbps. If you want a connection that will be close to the max all the time, I would suggest switching to cable/DOCSIS internet or getting home fiber. | ||
Defeat
United States476 Posts
On December 07 2010 13:20 Kolvacs wrote: I have a 25Mbps with Shaw (which is the fastest ISP in Winnipeg) but I only get around 15Mbps on Speedtest and only get around 2.5Mbps on actual downloads. I hope you meant 2.5MB down because that would be a pretty crazy downgrade for your down speed D: | ||
semantics
10040 Posts
The number should be in your modems settings how you get to it depends on the modem. For dsl there is also a matter of what your lines can carry my home is limited to around 10mbits/s on the download, this too can be found on your modems settings and diagnostics pages. On December 07 2010 13:20 Kolvacs wrote: I have a 25Mbps with Shaw (which is the fastest ISP in Winnipeg) but I only get around 15Mbps on Speedtest and only get around 2.5Mbps on actual downloads. Most servers aren't going to give you 15MB/s of their upload bandwidth. | ||
Disregard
China10252 Posts
For instance I am a tier 1 user of Optimum Online, advertised max speeds are in the range of 15/2. But their policy is anything above 5/1 is generally acceptable at that tier, the only time I would get anything near the max is during the early hours in the morning. Im sure your using a congested node, thats why your connection is being throttled. You can get a more expensive fiber plan if your area has it or get a DOCSIS 3.0 modem. My provider is fussy swapping the new modems for low tier users, but Ive heard it usually solves all the problems. You might want to call a tech to check your cables and wiring, a loose header or something can cause latency and other issues. | ||
crojar
United States59 Posts
I have 25 mbps and it's fiber optic. I am always >= 25 mbps on speakeasy. Usually just under 26. Cable is usually lower than advertised in my experience. | ||
Uriel_SVK
Slovakia427 Posts
Are you on Fiber or metalic? Check if your provider has FUP, and also check agregation. It should be non-existant on fiber, or it is at least with my provider... Are you using wireless router? For a test try to connect directly to cable. If there are many wireless networks around you it might be needed to play with channel setting of your router. | ||
RebirthOfLeGenD
USA5860 Posts
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gslavik
United States72 Posts
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Grobyc
Canada18410 Posts
- You aren't guaranteed 20Mbps (Mb = Megabits, MB = Megabytes. 8 bits in a byte) down from your ISP. It is not the minimum nor the max; it's more of an average. I have a 15Mbps down connection speed but often get 22 Mbps or so when testing, and occasionally 12ish. - Believe it or not, your neighbourhoods usage of internet can affect your connection speed. Different ISP have different ways of delivering their service, so this isn't always the case, but it's a possibility. Shaw cable here in Kelowna pretty well places a switch in each neighbourhood for its clients to connect to. Say the switch can process up to 100Mbps in a single switch port, if you have 8 people simultaneously maxing their connection speed the 100Mbps will be divided between the 8 people. Other ISPs, Telus here in Kelowna for example, offers dedicated connections so that doesn't happen. - Ping delay is the time it takes for your packets to reach a destination and back. Even if you have a high connection speed, you may still experience lag due to a high ping. I'll give an analogy: You are moving from Housten to Boston. You are looking to take your belongings so you rent a moving truck to transfer your stuff. It will take a total of 6 hours to move all your stuff. On the other hand, you can rent a Porsche to move your belongings, getting you there and back faster, making faster trips, however since you can't hold nearly as much as the moving truck so it takes a total of 2 days to complete the move. The moving truck here is analogous to a high data rate with high latency, and the Porsche is analogous to a low data rate but with a high latency. Your location and ISP typically determine the ping unfortunately, so if you made it all the way through reading this the tl;dr is you're probably fucked in this regard. - Virtually all speed testing websites measure in Mbps, not MBps. - There could be many reasons for having a connection speed that varies greatly from the advertised speed. Try plugging your computer directly in to the internet source (I.E. where your router connects to the wall/modem) and taking the test again. If your results are higher you have something on your network choking your speed probably. - If you are on a laptop the connection speed will obviously be worse, but it shouldn't be that bad tbh. Assuming you are probably on a 802.11g access point, that gives you 54Mbps. If you have a 50% signal strength (disregarding attenuation/noise) you are at 27Mbps. You ISP is going you 20Mbps, so you are still provided with the 20Mbps advertised by your ISP. Sorry if I got too technical here; I go to school for this stuff so it happens naturally =/ | ||
Grobyc
Canada18410 Posts
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aztrorisk
United States896 Posts
I have 2 computers and I have a 3 mb internet. My old computer can only handle 1.5 mb so when I test it on speedtest, it only came up 1.5 mb but when I tested it with my new computer, it came up 3 mb. another possibility is that several people are using the internet at the same time | ||
Liveon
Netherlands1083 Posts
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r4sc
Germany22 Posts
The only way you can be sure of your actual connection speed is testing it with a server you can ensure is not suffering congestion and has a sufficiently fast connection. | ||
Grobyc
Canada18410 Posts
On December 07 2010 18:01 r4sc wrote: Bear in mind these public speedtesters can be wildly inaccurate. I just took the test on speedtest.net on a 1Gbit/s line, it came out with just 70Mbit/s (i.e. an error margin of >1000%). speedtest.net (which used a server sponsered by Vodaphone supposed to be only a few kms away from here) measured a ping of 9ms which is pretty accurate (servers <200km away clock in at about 5-10ms). cnet's test is even worse with measly 12Mbit/s. The only way you can be sure of your actual connection speed is testing it with a server you can ensure is not suffering congestion and has a sufficiently fast connection. You running off a fiber optic connection or something? I mean I know Europe connection speeds are generally high, but wtf @ 1Gbps o.O Sure you don't just have a gigabit router/switch? | ||
CoFran
Canada342 Posts
Now from what i gather here your connection is ADSL? Be advised that with those type of connection, capping your upload will significantly (rougly 60%) downgrade your download speed. | ||
R1CH
Netherlands10341 Posts
On December 07 2010 18:01 r4sc wrote: Bear in mind these public speedtesters can be wildly inaccurate. I just took the test on speedtest.net on a 1Gbit/s line, it came out with just 70Mbit/s (i.e. an error margin of >1000%). speedtest.net (which used a server sponsered by Vodaphone supposed to be only a few kms away from here) measured a ping of 9ms which is pretty accurate (servers <200km away clock in at about 5-10ms). cnet's test is even worse with measly 12Mbit/s. The only way you can be sure of your actual connection speed is testing it with a server you can ensure is not suffering congestion and has a sufficiently fast connection. It's pretty obvious these aren't designed for testing high bandwidth links since they are flash based and don't allow enough time for rwin tuning to apply. As long as you pick a nearby test server, you should be testing your line speed pretty accurately up to about 100mbps. If you have over 10-20ms ping to a nearby server (<200 miles) something is messed up with your connection or ISP. www.pingtest.net is arguably more important than a speed test since high ping and packet loss will greatly decrease speed. | ||
Kolvacs
Canada1203 Posts
On December 07 2010 13:49 Defeat wrote: I hope you meant 2.5MB down because that would be a pretty crazy downgrade for your down speed D: Oh woops, yes sorry XD. I re-read it just now. | ||
manGomaGic
Canada94 Posts
there could either be a problem on their end or a problem with your physical setup at home. | ||
lolbolt
206 Posts
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r4sc
Germany22 Posts
On December 07 2010 19:18 Grobyc wrote: You running off a fiber optic connection or something? I mean I know Europe connection speeds are generally high, but wtf @ 1Gbps o.O Sure you don't just have a gigabit router/switch? Gigabit Ethernet at university (As a student, I don't get more, I think the whole facility is connected with 5-10GBit/s). At home, I'm connected with just 16MBit/s. Anyway, back to topic: One thing you can measure without fuss is the RTT/delay/lag/ping. Just use traceroutetraceroute (tracert on Windows) on any random URL. Note that some intermediary hosts may drop or throttle ICMP messages, so repeat your measurements if it seems unrealistic. Most US ISPs should have pretty good names for their routers, so you should be able to determine where the packets leave your ISP's network. Otherwise, just traceroute 2/3/4 different targets and look where the routes diverge. For online gaming, bandwidth is pretty negligible, it's the delay that counts. | ||
TURKISHRAMBO
Canada148 Posts
MB != Mb | ||
semantics
10040 Posts
So in other words we are looking for this data that can be found on your modem. The 200 ping is that the closest you are to a sever? that seems quite far vista and windows 7 don't require any tweaking but xp does. ![]() | ||
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