Reply to post: Re: here's something to do :

Re: here's something to do :

Just how accurate/reliable are those two sites - and, indeed, any other site?

I didn't know about them up to now, and have always relied on the Ookla test available at https://www.speedtest.net/.

I've got a bog-standard residential connection, no capping, but no contractual speed promises either. The complete landline and broadband package sets me back £25 a month - I never use the landline, preferring to VOIP to various contacts, so no actual 'phone' bills involved. It occasionally drops out, and when I check the router (in the broom cupboard), I normally see a red light on it, along with a couple of flashing green ones, indicating that there's a problem of some sort. The connection usually resumes within a short period of time, and then I see '5 greens'.

So when I saw those two test site addresses, I tried them out, along with Ookla, and compared results. Ran 3 tests back-to-back on each of them.

All three sites report latency values of 29 to 30 ms

All three sites report upload speeds of between 0.93 and 1.09 mb/sec. The Ofcom site reported a constant 1.0 mb/sec

For the download speeds, Ookla and Ofcom reported 13+ mb/sec - once again the Ofcom site readings were constant, at 13.1. The MLab site on the other hand reported download speeds of 4.72, 5.06 and 6.47 mb/sec.

Additionally, the Ofcom site always ended the test with a warning that my "...connection is performing badly..." That warning simply doesn't appear for the Mlab and Ookla tests, so I'm guessing that bit of analysis isn't built into them.

I'm aware of the possible confusion between mB/sec and mb/sec, which I've always taken to mean megabytes/sec and megabits/sec respectively, so went back and re-read the summaries. All three sites say mb/sec, but read into that what you will.

The Mlab download stats are so out of whack, I not sure what to believe...