Midband speedtest Megaathread

editorsean

A linear download test is the equivalent to running a single download or streaming video, i.e. single connection to the server. For example, most streaming services only make a single connection to the server.

A multi-threaded test makes multiple connections to the server, similar to opening a webpage with multiple images as the browser makes multiple connections to download groups of images simultaneously. Another example would be BitTorrent client or a download accelerator that makes multiple connections to download separate parts of a large file simultaneously.

The Ookla Speedtest makes multiple connections to try to saturate the link. The one main issue I find with it is that if an ISP needs multiple connections to saturate the link, the speed it reports will generally be considerably higher than what one would experience when downloading a file or streaming video.

So if let's say the Ookla Speedtest reports 8Mbps down and YouTube is struggling to play 480p even though 8Mbps is enough for 1080p, then it's quite possible that the single connection to the server is only sustaining a small fraction of that speed, while another ISP with the same 8Mbps result in Ookla Speedtest plays the same video on YouTube just fine in 1080p.

So far with my testing on Meteor, it seems to report the same speed with linear and multi-threaded transfers, while the Three network tends to have a vast speed difference between a multi-threaded test and a linear test, which probably explains why the Three network sometimes appears sluggish (in my area) even with a decent test result on Ookla's Speedtest.

It would be really nice if Ookla added linear tests to its Speedtest tool, but as it's the preferred testing tool by most ISPs, I'm sure some ISPs would rather users not seeing such a drastic difference between linear and multi-threaded tests, particularly those with heavy congestion on their network.

-=al=-

I don't know what the recent weather and storm have done, but I've managed to get an extra bar of signal out of it giving me 4/5 bars resulting in this



Usually get a 30ms ping, 10 down and 10 up... Thx Desmond!

Any thoughts as to what may have helped the connection?

monster1

Been getting consistent high speeds with three in Roscommon... never been this fast







Thought the upload speed isnt great.

ACLFC7

monster1 wrote: »

Been getting consistent high speeds with three in Roscommon... never been this fast







Thought the upload speed isnt great.

Nice, what router? B593s?

monster1

ACLFC7 wrote: »

Nice, what router? B593s?

It was my phone tethered to the computer via usb. (vodafone smart ultra 6)

jay93

-=al=- wrote: »

I don't know what the recent weather and storm have done, but I've managed to get an extra bar of signal out of it giving me 4/5 bars resulting in this



Usually get a 30ms ping, 10 down and 10 up... Thx Desmond!

Any thoughts as to what may have helped the connection?

One of the antennas might have moved in the wind lol :P

-=al=-

Indeed it has. I went out and had a gander at what happened and sure enough, it is now facing North East! The nearest mast is South West and I always had it facing that way, but it works great now. Almost 4 times better at it's peak from just moving a few inches, crazy really.

Nonoperational

Vodafone in Cork

jay93

-=al=- wrote: »

Indeed it has. I went out and had a gander at what happened and sure enough, it is now facing North East! The nearest mast is South West and I always had it facing that way, but it works great now. Almost 4 times better at it's peak from just moving a few inches, crazy really.

That is crazy ! And lucky too , is it still the same ?

jay93

Nonoperational wrote: »

Vodafone in Cork

Wow crazy, do you have a 6s? Looks like 4G+ think you have to be on bill pay to get that too.

Nonoperational

Yeah it's a 6s plus on Red Extra. In fairness the caps are small, but it's a great service.

jay93

Nonoperational wrote: »

Yeah it's a 6s plus on Red Extra. In fairness the caps are small, but it's a great service.

Insane data speeds though ! I have the iPhone 6 on pay as you go and the speeds are usually 40-60Mb/s down which is good considering I can't get 4G+. The caps are quite small alright I only get 3GB a month but I'm always on WiFi so it doesn't bother me.

-=al=-

3GB!

Jesus Christ Vodafone you miserable b*stards. It's 2015!

It's like giving someone a Ferrari with 10 seconds worth of fuel

I'll stick to my reliable Hyundai Accent :pac:

editorsean

I'm sure Vodafone's method would solve road congestion also - Just set a 3 trip per month limit per reg and voila, a congestion free road.

With Three's 4G speed slowing to a crawl through most of Co. Donegal, I decided to see if Tesco Mobile is affected. My manager is on that network with a bill pay plan, so I asked if I could run some speed tests with his phone.

As far as I can tell from running various tests, Tesco Mobile has its data rate capped at 2Mbps both down and up. While I heard about this in the past, I didn't realise this still seems to be the case. With test after test, I kept getting between 1.99Mbps and 2.01Mbps and similar up with large test block sizes on testmy.net.



The following is its "Test in Progress" graph during the 25MB download test just to show how flat the speed is around the 2Mbps grid line:

Nonoperational

I have 9GB a month with Vodafone which is perfect for all but HD streaming really. Loads of wifi around, only used 1GB last month!

mayo.mick

I'm hearing a lot of good things about the Huawei B539s-22 router, so I'm thinking of investing. Running some regular speedtests to be able to compare difference (hopefully improved). Will be the new year before it arrives.

jay93

-=al=- wrote: »

3GB!

Jesus Christ Vodafone you miserable b*stards. It's 2015!

It's like giving someone a Ferrari with 10 seconds worth of fuel

I'll stick to my reliable Hyundai Accent :pac:

It's quite crappy the 3GB for €30 I get unlimited calls texts and 3GB of data .

I could get Data Extra as they call it for €10 they deduct €10 from a €20 top up and you get unlimited calls and texts to Vodafone customers only and 5GB of 4G data.

I'm thinking of switching back to that since I don't call or text at all really I use my data or WiFi for FaceTime audio calls or Skype or Facebook messenger calls.

I think with 4G the minimum data for a month should be 20GB they are still giving 3G style data allowances really annoying.

jay93

editorsean wrote: »

I'm sure Vodafone's method would solve road congestion also - Just set a 3 trip per month limit per reg and voila, a congestion free road.

With Three's 4G speed slowing to a crawl through most of Co. Donegal, I decided to see if Tesco Mobile is affected. My manager is on that network with a bill pay plan, so I asked if I could run some speed tests with his phone.

As far as I can tell from running various tests, Tesco Mobile has its data rate capped at 2Mbps both down and up. While I heard about this in the past, I didn't realise this still seems to be the case. With test after test, I kept getting between 1.99Mbps and 2.01Mbps and similar up with large test block sizes on testmy.net.



The following is its "Test in Progress" graph during the 25MB download test just to show how flat the speed is around the 2Mbps grid line:

Threes issue is the unlimited data for sure a mobile network shouldn't have those kind of loads placed onto it it's a great deal and all and it's good not having to worry about using data but the speeds are crap everywhere even when I was lucky enough to get 4G on Three it was slower than my 3G on Vodafone . That's really odd though the issue your having with Tesco that shouldn't be the case they removed that 2Mb/s limit a long time ago when I was with them in fact they removed it I could get speeds up to 9Mb/s in my area with Tesco.

jay93

Nonoperational wrote: »

I have 9GB a month with Vodafone which is perfect for all but HD streaming really. Loads of wifi around, only used 1GB last month!

Wish I had 9GB a month ! But I'm like you I rarely use the 4G I'm always on WiFi at home or friends and families houses. When I'm out and about all I use my data for is sending iMessages and other online messages so I usually have a good 1-2 GB left from my 3GB.

jay93

mayo.mick wrote: »

I'm hearing a lot of good things about the Huawei B539s-22 router, so I'm thinking of investing. Running some regular speedtests to be able to compare difference (hopefully improved). Will be the new year before it arrives.

Let us know when you do get it and if any improvement in the service I think that router is 4G not sure though I'm gonna have a look at it now .

Edit: yeah it's 4G dunno if they have that service in your area or if you got the 4G plan.

mayo.mick

jay93 wrote: »

Let us know when you do get it and if any improvement in the service I think that router is 4G not sure though I'm gonna have a look at it now .

Edit: yeah it's 4G dunno if they have that service in your area or if you got the 4G plan.

Backwards compatible with 3G. Checked it out on a few other forums from people using it. Seems to give a great boost in speeds. I'll post up results when I get router, will pro be next week. Future proofing for when I do get 4G (hopefully for free as vodafone did with my phone acc) There is no 4G in my area (Swinford) though sometimes I do manage to get 1 bar of 4G when out in certain parts of town. App on phone shows signal coming from mast in centre of Kiltimagh town 7 miles away

Edit: here's the specs for this router if anyone else thinking of purchasing it. Its 2g/3g/4g compatible.

http://support.huawei.com/ecommunity/bbs/10176957.html

jay93

mayo.mick wrote: »

Backwards compatible with 3G. Checked it out on a few other forums from people using it. Seems to give a great boost in speeds. I'll post up results when I get router, will pro be next week. Future proofing for when I do get 4G (hopefully for free as vodafone did with my phone acc) There is no 4G in my area (Swinford) though sometimes I do manage to get 1 bar of 4G when out in certain parts of town. App on phone shows signal coming from mast in centre of Kiltimagh town 7 miles away

Edit: here's the specs for this router if anyone else thinking of purchasing it. Its 2g/3g/4g compatible.

http://support.huawei.com/ecommunity/bbs/10176957.html

Hoping the 3G speeds are better on that router it's possible they might be I have had good results from using a certain router before when I had Three broadband that's annoying no 4G I'm around 1.5Km from my local cell which has 4G so I always get it on my phone the download and upload is crazy on 4G.

mayo.mick

jay93 wrote: »

Hoping the 3G speeds are better on that router it's possible they might be I have had good results from using a certain router before when I had Three broadband that's annoying no 4G I'm around 1.5Km from my local cell which has 4G so I always get it on my phone the download and upload is crazy on 4G.

I'm doing regular tests here recently since I decided to get the Hauwei. They have never been consistaintly so good, I'd swear its for spite Should be here either tomorrow or Tuesday, it arrived in Dublin yesterday eve.

funnyname

What app are you using to pinpoint the mast?

mayo.mick wrote: »

Backwards compatible with 3G. Checked it out on a few other forums from people using it. Seems to give a great boost in speeds. I'll post up results when I get router, will pro be next week. Future proofing for when I do get 4G (hopefully for free as vodafone did with my phone acc) There is no 4G in my area (Swinford) though sometimes I do manage to get 1 bar of 4G when out in certain parts of town. App on phone shows signal coming from mast in centre of Kiltimagh town 7 miles away

Edit: here's the specs for this router if anyone else thinking of purchasing it. Its 2g/3g/4g compatible.

http://support.huawei.com/ecommunity/bbs/10176957.html

mayo.mick

funnyname wrote: »

What app are you using to pinpoint the mast?

Open Signal app on android.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.staircase3.opensignal&hl=en

mayo.mick

mayo.mick wrote: »

Backwards compatible with 3G. Checked it out on a few other forums from people using it. Seems to give a great boost in speeds. I'll post up results when I get router, will pro be next week. Future proofing for when I do get 4G (hopefully for free as vodafone did with my phone acc) There is no 4G in my area (Swinford) though sometimes I do manage to get 1 bar of 4G when out in certain parts of town. App on phone shows signal coming from mast in centre of Kiltimagh town 7 miles away

Edit: here's the specs for this router if anyone else thinking of purchasing it. Its 2g/3g/4g compatible.

http://support.huawei.com/ecommunity/bbs/10176957.html

It is a damn fine router I have to say - It does tend to freeze once in the blue moon that needs a hard reset but besides that it is excellent. I have had it on 3g and 4g and on 3g it seemed to nearly double the speed.

As for 4g well:



I was getting 35 but it has dropped to 20 to 25 with additional users on 4g where I am but still - a damn sight better than I ever had it on 3g

editorsean

jay93 wrote: »

That's really odd though the issue your having with Tesco that shouldn't be the case they removed that 2Mb/s limit a long time ago when I was with them in fact they removed it I could get speeds up to 9Mb/s in my area with Tesco.

Indeed a Tesco rep confirmed this also in their forum section. So far I had little luck with them on the forum as they stopped replying to the thread. So I'll try talking with Tesco directly tomorrow.

Three's 4G speed on Monday morning was quite poor in Ballybofey. I forgot to check the evening speed before heading home.



I bought a Vodafone PayG SIM as I am curious to see what their speeds are like around Co. Donegal as well as along my drive to work for Internet radio. For anyone curious, their in-store bill pay mobile broadband plans are indeed more generous than on their website - 15GB for €22, 30GB for €30 and 50GB for €50 per month, all with 4G access and a 12 month minimum contract.

mayo.mick

The Router arrived yesterday evening and had it set up in about 10 minutes. Haven't done much testing but so far seems good, not a huge improvement. I have it set up in same location as the old R-214 modem but am only getting 1 bar signal now I have been moved to a different ip from vodafone when I switched over whether that's making any difference? Yesterday and today's results are from the new Huawei. Will try moving it around the house to see if it will improve.

[IMG][/img]

I really like all that you can do with this. I can set up a proper network now. Just for any thinking that this is for 4G LTE, it is backwards compatible to 3G and 2G and will switch between networks.

[IMG][/img]

editorsean

For those with Huawei routers, I recommend getting the Huawei HiLink app as it can provide functionality not present in the router's main user interface.

For example, on my Huawei E8278 (USB-powered MiFi), it does not have a menu for choosing the 2G/3G/4G or network selection. However, in the app, I can manually do a network search as well as force it to a specific mode such as 3G only.

-=al=-

Did you have a fixed ip on Vodafone before?

As for signal, I found that 1-2 bars were similar results. 3 was decent and 4 bars was a big difference.



That's 4 bars of signal on Meteor, which actually dropped to about 6Mbps up/down over Christmas but has returned to it's usual decent self since January.

I'd generally only get 10Mbps up/down on 3 bars but it's almost 3 times better with the 4th bar of signal which is nice indeedy! I get 50GB a month and it does the trick :pac:

editorsean

Vodafone 4G in Ballybofey, Linear & Multithreaded at about 5pm:



HTTPS traffic on their network seems to have higher priority as it consistently gives several Mb higher, whereas Meteor always gave me the same between HTTP and HTTPS based tests. Linear test (TestMy doesn't support multithreaded over HTTPS):



Three for comparison about the same time, linear & multithreaded:



I must try a HTTPS test again on Three. Up until a few months ago, HTTPS traffic was about 10x faster than HTTP traffic (like 1Mbps vs 10Mbps) and then whatever they tweaked (around the time the Three forum got flooded with bad speed complaints), their HTTPS throughput fell down to that of HTTP. Before that happened, a simple workaround to get a fast connection was to establish an OpenVPN based VPN connection (e.g. HMA) which pipes everything over HTTPS and web pages loaded up a heck of a lot quicker on the phone. I'm not sure what protocol/port Ookla's speedtest.net uses as its test results were like the HTTPS test results I got on TestMy.

jay93

Just a quick test on Three 3G from a modem I had I bought €5 credit to get a small Internet bundle to see if they improved and so far it's looking ok still wouldn't switch my phone from Vodafone since I get 4G everywhere with them.

jay93

Just done a test on 4G on my phone there I'm inside and have 2 bars of signal at home

jay93

Another one from Three pretty much says it all in the test...

jay93

Now it's fine again.

editorsean

On Monday just before I left work at 5pm, I did two speed tests on Three in Ballybofey, one over HTTP and the second over HTTPS:



Vodafone seems to also throttle HTTP to some extent. By the time about 10MB is downloaded, the speed drops off to some extent, but still a heck of a lot faster than Three. The following HTTP and HTTPS tests were run about the same time today on Vodafone 4G, but just outside Dunkineely on my way home while travelling with someone.



It's worth noting that Ookla's Speedtest runs all its tests over port 8080 unless the port is blocked by a firewall. For comparison, HTTP and HTTPS traffic are carried over ports 80 and 443, respectively.

ED E

ED E wrote: »

Move to northern europe lads.

New record today. I think I'm hitting the limit of the 801, need to nuy an 810 based phone.

jay93

ED E wrote: »

New record today. I think I'm hitting the limit of the 801, need to nuy an 810 based phone.

Nice which carrier are you with?

jay93

Full bars 4G in my town I'm closer to the mast so it's better than it would be in my house where I only get 2-3 bars.



Vodafone are operating on band 20 LTE here.

jay93

Some band 3 LTE testing in drogheda. My area only has band 20 LTE.

jay93

Scruff

same sh1t happening on my meteor 4g again: Signal quality increases from 1 to 3 bars but speed go down the toilet :mad:
dl hit the floor, upload increased by x3


Had to force usb dongle to go to 3G to get better speeds. ffs!


Must get a Vodafone PAYG sim to check 4g in my area. if i can get near Jay93's speeds i might have to swallow the x2.5 price difference to my meteor package..

jay93

Currently in the USA for a few months did a speed test yesterday on T-Mobile USA which will be my carrier Til I come back to Ireland. This is the current speeds I get some areas are slower.



This was taken on full bars of LTE / 4G

jay93

Scruff wrote: »

same sh1t happening on my meteor 4g again: Signal quality increases from 1 to 3 bars but speed go down the toilet :mad:
dl hit the floor, upload increased by x3


Had to force usb dongle to go to 3G to get better speeds. ffs!


Must get a Vodafone PAYG sim to check 4g in my area. if i can get near Jay93's speeds i might have to swallow the x2.5 price difference to my meteor package..

You could test out Vodafone to see how their service is. In my experience with them they have the best 4G coverage and speeds around the country

funnyname

I can get a 4g signal from Vodafone on my phone but only when I'm hanging out the window.

I bought the following to test on a payg data sim I also got from Vodafone.

Huawei Unlocked E3372 LTE/4G 150 Mbps USB Dongle - Black

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B011BRKPLE?

Nedis Valueline 3m USB 3.0 A Male to USB A Female Flat Extension Cable

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00DC2MI7G?

The flat usb cable is so that I can hang the dongle outside a velux window and still close it.

However when I ran speedtest I got the following results and when I check the dongle connection, it was only ever saying it was connected to UMTS or HSPA+



But when I hung out the window with the dongle attached directly to the laptop I got the following speeds



Is there anything I can do to get these speeds all the time with the dongle outside and connected via a lead?

Regards

FN

Ten Pin

funnyname wrote: »

Is there anything I can do to get these speeds all the time with the dongle outside and connected via a lead?

Regards

FN

Try an active / repeater USB extension cable. Signal over USB depends on length of cable and passive cables max out at 5m. So you're probably losing some speed (signal) at 3m of cable. Active USB cables aren't cheap though and flat ones will cost more, if they're even available.

funnyname

I tried an ordinary USB extension lead and it worked fine, window also closed so it's a bit dumb that I worked out for the flat lead first. All OK in the end tho.

pizzahead77

100 Mb/sec down on Three's 4G+

Heraldoffreeent

pizzahead77 wrote: »

100 Mb/sec down on Three's 4G+

Hi Pizzahead, where in Dublin is that?

jay93

pizzahead77 wrote: »

100 Mb/sec down on Three's 4G+

That's quite impressive for Three pitty they don't just make their regular 4G more widespread and keep the speeds up on that first though