Checking NTL 6mb speed

toffo3619

Hi all,

Does anyone know of a fail safe way of checking download speeds?

NTL installed cable broadband this week with me, I ordered the 6mb service. However after an hour or two I realised that it wasn't as fast as BTs 3mb I was using up a few days ago. I checked my download speed with the following sites:

http://www.irishisptest.com/runmyspeed.php
http://homepage.tinet.ie/~leslie/testpage.htm
http://bandwidthplace.com/speedtest
http://www.computers4sure.com/speed.asp?iid=154
http://www.pcpitstop.com/internet/Bandwidth.asp

They all showed I had a download speed ranging between 3.25 to 3.95mb.

I called NTL, they told me that I should not trust http://www.irishisptest.com/runmyspeed.php, saying that this service can only check up to 4mb. I contacted www.irishisptest.com and they told me that they could check for everything over 4mb. www.irishisptest.com replied to another forum posting saying they could supply me with a screenshot to prove they can check up to 100 megs. So I'd trust www.irishisptest.com.

While on the phone to NTL they told me to go to ftp://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/TheOpenCD/releases/3.1/ and download the TheOpenCD. The transfer rate peeked at 675KB/Sec, the NTL guy told me that this proves I was getting 6mb download. Does this make any sense to anyone?

The NTL guy told me that the download speed depends on the website I try to download from. So I tried Yahoo, and still the transfer rate was 675KB/Sec.

I had a look at my modem config and it shows the following below:

Cable Modem Operation Configuration:

Network Access : Allowed
Maximum Downstream Data Rate : 6144000

Cable Modem Downstream:

Downstream Lock : Locked
Downstream Channel Id : 40
Downstream Frequency : 418750000 Hz
Downstream Modulation : QAM256
Downstream Symbol Rate : 6952 Ksym/sec
Downstream Interleave Depth : taps12Increment17
Downstream Receive Power Level : 4.6 dBmV
Downstream SNR : 37.6 dB

Does anyone know if the information in my modem config would effect my download speed?

Any replies or advice will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Toffo

garthv

If you are getting 675kb/s from heanet then you definetly have a 6mb line.
Donwload speeds also depend on your download source and heanet is the biggest irish site out there so its going to have decent speeds.

bk

675KB/s = 5.4Mb/s

REmember 8 bits in a byte, so multiply 675 by 8.

So yes you are getting very close to 6Mb.

The problem with all the speed tests at the moment seems to be that UPC (NTLs owners) haven't started peering in the INEX yet. A speedtest program hosted in Amsterdam would give you a more accurate figure.

nava

Hi

I found speedtest.nl. I have a 3mb but show up as 1.5mb, but my low result could be related to my setup, Cable Modem, SAP2100 (router/voip) Belkin router and wireless connection to a laptop.

Regards

toffo3619

Thanks all for getting back to me.

Like nava, I'm using wirless and belkin.

I'll keeping testing and try to learn more about this stuff.

Toffo