Question Internet speed test ?

[M Donovan]

I was working on neighbor's computer today, and just out of curiosity ran speedtest. The numbers didn't look right, so tried multiple other online internet speed test sites. They all came out about the same. His computer has no lag opening or switching between internet sites/tabs, and movies on youtube play perfectly without buffer at 4K. All of the speed testing sights showed however, a max download speed of 2.3 Mbps, sometimes down to 1.2 Mbps, and upload was at a best of 0.4 Mbps! How is that possible?

I have a cheap internet setup with a max of 5 Mbps I pay for, plenty good for my use, and it usually tests between 4.7 to 5.1 Mbps. 480p on youtube is no problem for me, but rarely can play something at 720 without buffer. Not an issue and it's been like this for years. Why does his test so horribly slow, even though it works fantastic?

 

[kanewolf]

Working on neighbor's computer today, and just out of curiosity ran speedtest. The numbers didn't look right, so tried multiple other online internet speed test sites. They all came out about the same. His computer has no lag opening or switching between internet sites/tabs, and movies on youtube play perfectly without buffer at 4K. All of the speed testing sights showed however, a max download speed of 2.3 Mbps, sometimes down to 1.2 Mbps, and upload was at a best of 0.4 Mbps! How is that possible? I have a cheap internet setup with a max of 5 Mbps I pay for, plenty good for my use, and it usually tests between 4.7 to 5.1 Mbps. 480p on youtube is no problem for me, but rarely can play something at 720 without buffer. Not an issue and it's been like this for years. Why does his test so horribly slow, even though it works fantastic?

One possibility is that the motherboard came with "game optimizer" network software. An example would be Asus game first software. That software messes with speedtest traffic because it is "saving" bandwidth for game traffic. Don't know if this is the answer, but that is one thing that I have seen happen.

 

[dingo07]

Have you asked what internet speed he's paying for?

 

[M Donovan]

Have you asked what internet speed he's paying for?

He's paying for 20 Mbps and I'm sure he's getting that or something close, from the response time on his computer, video quality and playback speed. He's an older gentleman using a Dell desktop that is at least 14 yrs. old at minimum, still using the Windows 7 it came with, and his version of extreme gaming is playing Solitaire that was included with the W7. lol Everything is fine for him and working great, just that I never saw a speedtest which was ridiculously slow while the the actual actions browsing and using internet is so fast. Typically, people complain of the exact opposite... lag and computer running slow. Another elderly set of neighbors, whom I've helped, has an HP desktop over 20 years old which I switched from Win7 to Win10 and removed all the bloatware and programs they didn't need. They have the same internet package, from same company, and it tests at around 19+ consistently.

 

[bill001g]

Maybe it is the browser or something else that is strange.

Try the resmon and watch the network tab. Be careful some things are in BYTES and others in BITS. This is not as simple to read as speedtest sites but it is likely more accurate. It tends to read a bit low because of how it averages over time when the traffic is very short term. You could try downloading something that takes a long time like a windows install image from microsoft. This should give you a good average. You can actually see the rate to just youtube when a video is playing if you dig around. Note when you look a the actual connections this data is in BYTES/sec

 

[cruisetung]

There is no way playing 4K video (which requires 30Mbps) smoothly and the speed is slow. The only possibility is you used the wrong websites to test speed.

Fast.com for example is one of the worst sites to test speed. Speedtest.net is usually the most trusted site used by most people.

And as suggested you could be confused between bits and bytes which has a 8x difference.

==

You also need to verify the video format when you are playing youtube video. Right click on Youtube video and choose "Stats for nerds" and see exactly what the current video format Youtube is playing to your PC, Youtube actually will adjust video stream format according to your bandwidth/speed.

 

[dingo07]

Don't harp on Win7, it was the best OS Microsoft ever released! I still use it today on my Dell XPS15M laptop I got back in 2006! And the original 85Wh battery still holds a charge!

If in fact the speed is what you say, then its possible the NIC is failing, or drivers got messed up somehow. Try updating drivers

 

[evermorex76]

What TYPE of service do they have? Any form of DSL or wireless is going to have varying performance and won't meet the "up to" speed that you're sold. Even someone next door could have a vastly better quality copper line connection and get better speeds. (In some cases, next door neighbors don't even connect to the same telco central office, so the distance of their connection could be very different which greatly affects DSL.)

I'm sure he's getting that or something close, from the response time on his computer, video quality and playback speed

What is the video quality and FPS of the playback that makes you think they're getting 20Mbps? A 480p video only needs about 1Mbps at minimum (2Mbps would help avoid buffering). You can just look at Windows task manager and see the throughput of the network interface while doing things online, so you can see how much bandwidth watching YouTube is using. Basic browsing of the Internet doesn't really take a huge amount of speed if you're willing to wait for the ads to load, and if you're satisfied with less than 5Mbps your idea of what is "good" sets a very low bar, so even 2Mbps may be enough to seem good enough while browsing.

 

[M Donovan]

There is no way playing 4K video (which requires 30Mbps) smoothly and the speed is slow. The only possibility is you used the wrong websites to test speed.

Fast.com for example is one of the worst sites to test speed. Speedtest.net is usually the most trusted site used by most people.

And as suggested you could be confused between bits and bytes which has a 8x difference.

==

You also need to verify the video format when you are playing youtube video. Right click on Youtube video and choose "Stats for nerds" and see exactly what the current video format Youtube is playing to your PC, Youtube actually will adjust video stream format according to your bandwidth/speed.

As far as bits and bytes, I wrote the speeds exactly as they were shown on Speedtest.net, in Mbps. That's exactly how they list it. The reason I believe he has WAY more than 1.2 Mbps... yes that's Mbps... is because his billing shows he pays for 20 Mbps (that's Mbps, directly off the monthly bill). I used Speedtest.net along with 5 or 6 other online testing sites, and all came out the same... 1.2 to 2.3 Mbps. Yes, I also know how to use youtube to manually set and check the video format speed the video is playing at. That's why when his is manually set to run 4K, the video is crystal clear and smooth as butter. This isn't an argument, I was just curious as to why it's showing these odd upload and download speeds. I built my first PC, which was actually a server, in 1999 and have built my own and repaired others over the years. I'm going to guess some of the people commenting weren't even born yet in '99. lol I have slow internet myself, 5 Mbps, because it's all I need or would use... general browsing, youtube once in a while, email, and CAD (Alibre and Fusion). Can boot up with Win7, Win10, or Linux. Need each one for separate programs and reasons... and don't feel like spending over $3,000 to move 2 programs from Win7 to 10, because the companies would make me have to buy the programs again.

 

[M Donovan]

I went back over to the neighbor's house, cause this really has me wondering. Youtube video chosen - LONDON 4K ULTRA HD (60FPS). Stats for Nerds:
Viewport/Frames 810x456*1.25 / 0 dropped of 62
Current/Optimal Res 3840x2160@60/3840x2160@60
Connection Speed - 2111 Kbps (That's 2.062 Mbps if I'm correct? Or am I wrong on that? Used converter calculator online)
Network Activity - 41 KB
Buffer Health - 10.92 s

 

[evermorex76]

Connection Speed - 2111 Kbps (That's 2.062 Mbps if I'm correct? Or am I wrong on that? Used converter calculator online)

Yes, that's about 2Mbps, which is what YouTube's servers detect as the possible bandwidth between you and the server. YouTube CAN technically playback 4K video at something low like 20Mbps, but I can't see how it can do it at 2Mbps. The Network Activity line is the actual throughput of the data at any moment. YouTube may only download segments of a video, so it may be zero if it has already fully downloaded the segment and isn't ready to download the next. It may also not need to download more to refill the buffer yet. Mine is zero nearly all the time. 41KBps (bytes) is certainly not enough to carry usable high-res/quality video or keep up a full buffer. (I can't find anything to explain why this is just a quantity (KB) rather than a rate (KBps).)

I watched on mine, with a 600Mbps fiber line and YT varied showing I had about 128Mbps to 320Mbps, and Network Activity would be 10 to 12MB every 30 seconds or so. The only thing I can think of is that YT is actually sending you a stream that is much more highly compressed than what I'm getting, so even though it's still technically 4K60, the quality is lower. (YouTube converts uploaded videos and stores them in multiple resolutions with different codecs and quality levels to meet the needs of devices with different processing power and decoding capabilities and bandwidth.) If you actually viewed it on a 4K display side by side with a different machine that had a higher bandwidth connection and a newer CPU/GPU, you would be able to see the difference in quality, more artifacts and pixelation, but since the video player is downscaling it to fit into the resolution of the web page (or monitor when in full screen), many of the artifacts may not be visible. You could probably play it at 1080p or even 720p and not even notice any difference on that person's screen, or it could be even better since it's not going through so many conversions or having to be downscaled so severely.

Your neighbor is not getting 20Mbps. As I said, he may be paying for "up to 20Mbps" with DSL or wireless, but those services very often don't come near the maximum theoretical rate, and the providers are perfectly happy to keep charging for a high speed even when they know you can't get it. DSL is dependent on distance from the central office and quality of the copper lines. They'll sell you service that could make 20Mbps based on the distance, but the line quality may only manage 5Mbps, and if you don't complain, they won't do anything. (Business-class DSL services and early consumer DSL used to actually send a tech to test the line quality before the contract was set. Self-install DSL never had that.) DSL is often also highly oversubscribed, but that doesn't generally result in a lower speed all day long. Wireless service is also highly variable based on distance and oversubscription, and providers aren't going to blanket a rural area with a large number of nodes to ensure everybody gets a strong signal and that there's enough backhaul bandwidth.

 

[cruisetung]

Viewport/Frames 810x456*1.25 / 0 dropped of 62
Current/Optimal Res 3840x2160@60/3840x2160@60
Connection Speed - 2111 Kbps (That's 2.062 Mbps if I'm correct?

That's because you used such a small window to watch the video.

So actually Youtube was streaming at a viewport with a window size at just 810x456 resolution, the bandwidth used at the time was just 2111 Kbps, way under his 20Mbps, that's exactly why it's smooth.

 

[M Donovan]

Yes, that's about 2Mbps, which is what YouTube's servers detect as the possible bandwidth between you and the server. YouTube CAN technically playback 4K video at something low like 20Mbps, but I can't see how it can do it at 2Mbps. The Network Activity line is the actual throughput of the data at any moment. YouTube may only download segments of a video, so it may be zero if it has already fully downloaded the segment and isn't ready to download the next. It may also not need to download more to refill the buffer yet. Mine is zero nearly all the time. 41KBps (bytes) is certainly not enough to carry usable high-res/quality video or keep up a full buffer. (I can't find anything to explain why this is just a quantity (KB) rather than a rate (KBps).)

I watched on mine, with a 600Mbps fiber line and YT varied showing I had about 128Mbps to 320Mbps, and Network Activity would be 10 to 12MB every 30 seconds or so. The only thing I can think of is that YT is actually sending you a stream that is much more highly compressed than what I'm getting, so even though it's still technically 4K60, the quality is lower. (YouTube converts uploaded videos and stores them in multiple resolutions with different codecs and quality levels to meet the needs of devices with different processing power and decoding capabilities and bandwidth.) If you actually viewed it on a 4K display side by side with a different machine that had a higher bandwidth connection and a newer CPU/GPU, you would be able to see the difference in quality, more artifacts and pixelation, but since the video player is downscaling it to fit into the resolution of the web page (or monitor when in full screen), many of the artifacts may not be visible. You could probably play it at 1080p or even 720p and not even notice any difference on that person's screen, or it could be even better since it's not going through so many conversions or having to be downscaled so severely.

Your neighbor is not getting 20Mbps. As I said, he may be paying for "up to 20Mbps" with DSL or wireless, but those services very often don't come near the maximum theoretical rate, and the providers are perfectly happy to keep charging for a high speed even when they know you can't get it. DSL is dependent on distance from the central office and quality of the copper lines. They'll sell you service that could make 20Mbps based on the distance, but the line quality may only manage 5Mbps, and if you don't complain, they won't do anything. (Business-class DSL services and early consumer DSL used to actually send a tech to test the line quality before the contract was set. Self-install DSL never had that.) DSL is often also highly oversubscribed, but that doesn't generally result in a lower speed all day long. Wireless service is also highly variable based on distance and oversubscription, and providers aren't going to blanket a rural area with a large number of nodes to ensure everybody gets a strong signal and that there's enough backhaul bandwidth.

Thanks for the details and possible answer. I moved to my current location from another state and had Comcast/Xfinity package to include their 400 Mbps. It tested on Speedtest typically around 360. Don't remember if I ever looked at the youtube data separately, as it was plenty fast which was good enough for me at the time. LIved kinda in the country, out of town location. My current internet, instead of the expensive local company, small town and only 2 available (both poor service), I use a cell phone attached via USB cable. Works well for my needs now. Even on his old monitor, you can tell a good difference between playing a youtube video at 720 compared to the 4K. Similar to the difference between 480 and 720. Thanks again for the answer. Just never came across anything like that in all these years. Even my cell phone set up is so much better than my first computer... dial up and using a casette tape for downloading and storing programs and files. TI-99/4A. lol

 

[evermorex76]

So actually Youtube was streaming at a viewport with a window size at just 810x456 resolution, the bandwidth used at the time was just 2111 Kbps, way under his 20Mbps, that's exactly why it's smooth.

I looked this up, and everything says YouTube still streams the data to your device according to the selected resolution, and then the player downscales it to the window size.

 

[evermorex76]

Thanks for the details and possible answer. I moved to my current location from another state and had Comcast/Xfinity package to include their 400 Mbps. It tested on Speedtest typically around 360. Don't remember if I ever looked at the youtube data separately, as it was plenty fast which was good enough for me at the time. LIved kinda in the country, out of town location. My current internet, instead of the expensive local company, small town and only 2 available (both poor service), I use a cell phone attached via USB cable. Works well for my needs now. Even on his old monitor, you can tell a good difference between playing a youtube video at 720 compared to the 4K. Similar to the difference between 480 and 720. Thanks again for the answer. Just never came across anything like that in all these years. Even my cell phone set up is so much better than my first computer... dial up and using a casette tape for downloading and storing programs and files. TI-99/4A. lol

What kind of service does the other person have? Almost certainly overpriced DSL or wireless for a small town like that.