Sky broadband testing.

Lordylordan

I was just wondering if anyone is seeing streaming problems. I have used ookla to test and it tells me I am getting a constant 25/30 Mbps. Yet at certain time I cannot stream as buffering in unbearable.

I have started using testmy.net and results are completely different . At times when streaming is impossible I can see with this tool that I and under 2mbps which would make sense with the streaming problems. Why then is ookla not reporting the same ?

ED E

Sean did a good job explaining it:

editorsean wrote: »

For anyone new to running speed tests and wondering why some ISPs show a drastic difference between TestMy.net and Speedtest.net, the two test sites work quite different. 

Speedtest.net runs its tests over port 8080.  While in theory this shouldn't make much difference to using port 80 (HTTP), it makes it very easy for ISPs to prioritise traffic over port 8080, which Three seems to do.  Most fixed line providers (Eircom, Sky, etc.) don't.  Speedtest.net makes multiple connections to the server, where as a realworld download or video streaming is carried over a single connection.  Finally, speedtest.net makes 20 speed measurements during its test and discards the slowest 30% and fastest 10% of these measurements before averaging the rest.  That's a bit like working out the average speed it takes to travel from one town to another excluding the 30% slowest parts (stop lights, etc) of the journey!

TestMy.net runs its test over standard http just like regular web browsing.  It times how long a specific block size takes to download and works out the speed.  For accuracy, it repeats with larger blocks until the transfer takes at least 7 seconds.  Simple as that! 

To run TestMy over port 8080 like speedtest.net does, go to http://testmy.net:8080/ (the :8080 accesses the website over port 8080) and ensure it says "Testing London, GB" at the top right.

For example, the following is a test I ran on Saturday in a 4G area near Donegal town with TestMy over port 8080 on my phone:



However, there's no way I can get this sort of speed with regular web access since most websites work over HTTP, not port 8080. 

In your case though I suspect Sky are hosting an Ookla node in house but Test.my is going to the UK. Bandwidth nationally is relatively cheap so its not a problem, but Dublin-London, Wexford-Wales/France, Belfast-England are in high demand.


Try selecting a Speedtest.net server in Paris and see what your speeds are.

Nollog

I'm on sky, who are you streaming to/from ?

Lordylordan

/\/ollog wrote: »

I'm on sky, who are you streaming to/from ?

I am also with sky.

Running the tests I can see the performance between 7 - 9:30 is usually around 2.3 mbs .

It is now not usable for streaming.
Look like SKY are the same as UPC.
Told up to 60mbs and a minimum of 20 ish.
If SKY determine the parameters of the test and I can run a test showing a different result I wonder what the response would be.
Plenty to stream anything right. Not so.

Just have to wait for another contract to run out as the regulator is spineless and will always side with SKY.

Nollog

Sky use BT who might have a bad contension ratio

I have felt it myself. Youtube is quite bad from 6 to 10.
People come home from work and your connection is less empty.

Lordylordan

Hi

So yesterday SKY broadband was terrible so started running a number of different tests.
Speedtest.net was returning poor results also

testmynet never returned more than 2 mbps.
I will be calling Sky today to complain.
With testmynet there is an option to run a 24 hour test which I will setup and I will post my results here.

It is extremely frustrating as this was working fine when it was installed first or so speedtest.net was reporting.So I wonder what has changed.
Can sky limit speeds or traffic shape?

If so can I see that from the router logs.

editorsean

In TestMy, just make sure it shows "Testing London, GB" or "Testing Frankfurt, DE" at the top-right, which generally have no problem maxing out a 100Mbps connection (I never tried anything faster). For some reason it intermittently defaults to Dallas in the USA, which will produce lower results than a nearby server. Then again, even if it's on a US server, you should be getting a lot more than 2Mbps.

If you would like when your automated test completes, I can put the figures in an Excel spreadsheet graph which I prepared last year trying out the Meteor 3G network in my area last November:



Just let me know the figures it shows in the ConnectID column for the test results, which will let me look them up. Generally the ConnectID figure changes each time your IP changes or the DSL connection is reconnected, so if the ConnectID figure changed multiple times over the 24 hour test, this could also mean the DSL connection is unstable, although this would not explain why the figures would be so much higher on Ookla.