Oct 16 2008

UK Broadband Speeds

Category: Internet Connections — ChrisM @ 5:38 am

Back when 2Mbit connections were the most a residential customer could aspire to, the broadband speed tests that were available were, in general, reliable. Of course, if the server that the test data was held on was over in America, then you could expect slight variance between reported speeds and your actual potential maximum throughput, and if the test data size was too small, you would need to shop around for larger data test schemes. However, as ADSL+ and then ADSL2 became available, some of the older tests, or less reliable servers meant that such tests could not be relied upon to give accurate results. Of course, you could find three or four different suppliers of tests, run each four times and then average the results, but most people don’t bother. Virgin Media has been complaining that those of their customers who complain about slow speeds were often led to false, or at least slightly inaccurate conclusions. So they are apparently teaming up with on such bandwidth test supplier to try and ensure future tests are more reliable. For now, with my 256Kbit/sec connection, I don’t think I need to worry about changing my bookmarked tests just yet 🙂

Tags: , , , ,

2 Responses to “UK Broadband Speeds”

  1. joecomparebroadbandking says:
    October 16th, 2008 8:31 pm

    Nice post, i think it’s true that the tests are less reliable now, as ive found this to be the case more frequently. Good point about people running three or four tests and averaging them out, youre right most people wouldnt bother with that!

  2. ChrisM says:
    October 16th, 2008 10:31 pm

    The other option is to simply aim for total saturation, as long as outgoing traffic management packets aren’t flooded out. Finding several fast FTP servers, running a couple of well seeded torrents (perhaps with a temp. limit on the max. connections allowed in your torrent client), and downloading a few large files via HTTP from different sources, simultaneously, should give you a pretty good idea of what you can pull down per second. The more sources you use, the more accurate the figure should be, as any one individual server that then has a temporary bandwidth blip shouldn’t cause too much inaccuracy.
    Obviously you still need some app that will provide an accurate figure, but if broadband tests don’t scale up so well, once 24+ Mbit connections become the norm, it is a Heath Robinson style approach to getting the stats you want. Of course, many average users would lack the inclination, or in some cases the knowledge to do so. Hope that doesn’t come off as too patronising to the great unwashed 😉 but I used to work as tech support in a few ISPs, and many customers were most certainly at a basic level.
    Broadband Genie sounds familiar – have you been around at least four years or so?