Interpretering isp speed tests

Tipperarymike

Hi all,

Am new to the wonders of broadband, as I just recently had wireless bb installed. Naturally I am now curious as to how good or bad my speeds are, though its early days yet and my provider told me, on installation, that it would take a couple of days for my paperwork to go through and for my connection to get in line with my package, 2mb up and down. So I got stuck into irishisptest.com and found the below, basically I am just wondering how you guys rate this or what I need to look out for. Mainly use my machine for online poker and some other degenerate stuff but my brothers are sort of keen to get into online gaming of some kind or other. Any thoughts would be great.

Cheers

Mike

Summary Last 10 Results:

Date Download Speed Upload Speed Qos RTT Maxpause
02/08/2006 00:42 268 kbps (34 KB/s) 283 kbps (36 KB/s) 17 % 25 ms 910 ms
01/08/2006 21:23 327 kbps (41 KB/s) 470 kbps (59 KB/s) 38 % 51 ms 890 ms
01/08/2006 21:04 312 kbps (39 KB/s) 475 kbps (60 KB/s) 63 % 22 ms 710 ms
01/08/2006 20:41 401 kbps (51 KB/s) 481 kbps (61 KB/s) 28 % 21 ms 790 ms
01/08/2006 19:45 94 kbps (12 KB/s) 234 kbps (30 KB/s) 48 % 0 ms 1027 ms
01/08/2006 18:57 67 kbps (9 KB/s) 207 kbps (26 KB/s) 31 % 342 ms 1297 ms
01/08/2006 18:55 58 kbps (8 KB/s) 138 kbps (18 KB/s) 19 % 372 ms 1530 ms
Total Averages:

218 kbps (28 KB/s) 327kbps (41KB/s) 35 % 119 ms 1022 ms

richardo

Those results are NOT good. I'm on a 2M wireless connection and below is a sample from irishisptest. You can see the difference....


02/08/2006 09:20 1758 kbps (220 KB/s) 1687 kbps (211 KB/s) 90 % 7 ms 172 ms
31/07/2006 09:16 1603 kbps (201 KB/s) 829 kbps (104 KB/s) 74 % 6 ms 234 ms
30/07/2006 10:33 1785 kbps (224 KB/s) 1642 kbps (206 KB/s) 96 % 5 ms 187 ms
27/07/2006 08:42 1787 kbps (224 KB/s) 1699 kbps (213 KB/s) 89 % 6 ms 172 ms
25/07/2006 08:36 1377 kbps (173 KB/s) 1402 kbps (176 KB/s) 18 % 6 ms 860 ms
22/07/2006 09:13 1690 kbps (212 KB/s) 186 kbps (24 KB/s) 82 % 3 ms 375 ms
21/07/2006 09:06 1747 kbps (219 KB/s) 1511 kbps (189 KB/s) 89 % 8 ms 203 ms
17/07/2006 08:46 1818 kbps (228 KB/s) 1122 kbps (141 KB/s) 88 % 3 ms 172 ms
16/07/2006 09:41 1817 kbps (228 KB/s) 1751 kbps (219 KB/s) 92 % 6 ms 157 ms
14/07/2006 09:07 1387 kbps (174 KB/s) 610 kbps (77 KB/s) 81 % 8 ms 438 ms

Total Averages:
1677 kbps (210 KB/s) 1244kbps (156KB/s) 80 % 6 ms 297 ms

As for the bit about the "connection getting in line with the package"??? This has to be an IBB package? It sounds like their kind of weird support-speak!

Snaga

These tests are only accurate when combined with other information, they can be used to make an estimate allright, but you need to know how you are connecting to this site.

It could simply be that your wireless ISP is not well connected to the hosting centre that irishisptest.com is hosted in. Most large ISP's are, but if you are with a smaller ISP you might not be, that doesnt necessarily mean your internet speed sucks, just that your internet speed to www.irishisptest.com sucks.

Try a 'tracert www.irishisptest.com' from your command prompt and paste the results here, it will give us more information to go on.

Tipperarymike

but whats or more importantly ,how do I perform a tracert thingy? Am on a G5 Mac, so if thats a clue as to what I need to do.

Cheers for the replies guys

mickoneill30

No idea how to do a tracert on a mac. On normal unix it would be a command like this (from a command prompt or shell or whatever they call it on a Mac.
traceroute www.irishisptest.com
But on their FAQ they say they peer the test on other servers (I presume that means you might be running the test on irishisptest.com or on another server at a different site) so the traceroute might not be too applicable.

I'm on IBB and Irishisptest.com always shows me at about 700kbps (around 70Kb) but when I max out my connection for testing by unthrottling my torrents they manage speeds more like 220Kb down and roughly the same up (I'm on the Breeze 2Mb plan). Torrents can be hard to setup properly though and if you do the port forwarding wrong or connect to the wrong seeds you can get woeful results. My point is just that the test shows a wildly different result than what I can get in the real world.

Snaga

Im not being pedantic but when speaking about transfer rates you need to get the Kb/KB thing right... It'll all end in tears and confusion otherwise

mickoneill30 wrote:

I'm on IBB and Irishisptest.com always shows me at about 700kbps (around 70KB/s) but when I max out my connection for testing by unthrottling my torrents they manage speeds more like 220KB/s down and roughly the same up (I'm on the Breeze 2Mb plan). Torrents can be hard to setup properly though and if you do the port forwarding wrong or connect to the wrong seeds you can get woeful results. My point is just that the test shows a wildly different result than what I can get in the real world.

mickoneill30

Good point. I'm always confusing those.

Tipperarymike

It is nice, to say the least,to report that my bb providers were true to their word on the speeds getting tweaked after a few days. I didnt say who they were in my op as I wanted to be fair to what they said and see what ppl think now. My provider is a wireless company in Killaloe, called FWI. Its less than a week since I got it up and running, but to be honest I dont freaking know myself with the service. Out of curiousity I was wondering why the variations in speed, or is that down to the technology involved in the service

Regards

Mike


Summary Last 10 Results:

Date Download Speed Upload Speed Qos RTT Maxpause
06/08/2006 15:09 1529 kbps (192 KB/s) 3953 kbps (495 KB/s) 45 % 21 ms 942 ms
05/08/2006 22:35 1360 kbps (170 KB/s) 2210 kbps (277 KB/s) 26 % 43 ms 473 ms
05/08/2006 20:02 1275 kbps (160 KB/s) 2492 kbps (312 KB/s) 32 % 70 ms 549 ms
05/08/2006 12:09 1802 kbps (226 KB/s) 686 kbps (86 KB/s) 25 % 26 ms 595 ms
04/08/2006 21:16 1858 kbps (233 KB/s) 2792 kbps (349 KB/s) 32 % 22 ms 536 ms
04/08/2006 18:18 2077 kbps (260 KB/s) 1199 kbps (150 KB/s) 69 % 26 ms 595 ms
04/08/2006 12:42 1388 kbps (174 KB/s) 2239 kbps (280 KB/s) 27 % 26 ms 759 ms
04/08/2006 12:39 2262 kbps (283 KB/s) 562 kbps (71 KB/s) 57 % 31 ms 263 ms
04/08/2006 12:31 1556 kbps (195 KB/s) 1535 kbps (192 KB/s) 26 % 22 ms 744 ms
04/08/2006 12:27 2123 kbps (266 KB/s) 3501 kbps (438 KB/s) 19 % 21 ms 710 ms
Total Averages:

1723 kbps (216 KB/s) 2117kbps (265KB/s) 36 % 31 ms 617 ms

thund3rbird_

mickoneill30 wrote:

No idea how to do a tracert on a mac.

easiest if you have osx is to open HD > applications > utilities
in there is a network utility with options for ping / traceroute / whois etc

just enter the url / ip and hit trace

Tipperarymike

Traceroute has started ...

traceroute to www.boards.ie (82.195.136.250), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.100.1 (192.168.100.1) 24.309 ms 0.302 ms 0.221 ms
2 10.9.185.1 (10.9.185.1) 2.055 ms 33.439 ms 1.833 ms
3 10.9.16.1 (10.9.16.1) 222.917 ms 2.894 ms 5.267 ms
4 10.9.1.1 (10.9.1.1) 25.711 ms 3.808 ms 10.605 ms
5 10.9.1.4 (10.9.1.4) 6.115 ms 4.650 ms 17.616 ms
6 10.8.9.1 (10.8.9.1) 12.144 ms 14.886 ms 15.039 ms
7 10.8.8.3 (10.8.8.3) 6.982 ms 13.938 ms 5.644 ms
8 10.8.8.2 (10.8.8.2) 8.076 ms 12.160 ms 6.998 ms
9 10.8.16.2 (10.8.16.2) 9.200 ms 10.129 ms 7.283 ms
10 10.130.0.1 (10.130.0.1) 25.284 ms 8.162 ms 73.049 ms
11 1-98-cust.westnet.ie.westnet.ie (88.81.98.1) 45.168 ms 7.916 ms 8.784 ms
12 fe0-0-1-57.edge1.tcy.dub.stisp.net (84.203.144.93) 24.693 ms 128.658 ms 17.189 ms
13 84.203.138.118 (84.203.138.118) 37.836 ms 15.666 ms 27.473 ms
14 82.195.143.3 (82.195.143.3) 58.213 ms 19.915 ms 80.487 ms
15 boards.ie (82.195.136.250) 17.899 ms 18.326 ms 16.749 ms

mneylon

The SpeedTest is peered at INEX with most of the major ISPs, apart from NTL (at present)

There'll be a few minor changes on the site to improve accuracy for faster connections in the next few weeks as well - just need to track down our developer

jimmycrackcorm

blacknight wrote:

The SpeedTest is peered at INEX with most of the major ISPs, apart from NTL (at present)

There'll be a few minor changes on the site to improve accuracy for faster connections in the next few weeks as well - just need to track down our developer

Which explains why speedtest shows my ntl conneciton at 3.61 Mbps while both irishisptest and smart support both show 5.92.