Radical report differences between speed test sites.

[dbhosttexas]

I am noticing a bit of a slowdown over the last couple of days, so I wanted to get some reasonable data before I went to Comcast and hit them with the "What gives"? question....

Pulling a speed test from www.speedtest.net which has in the past been pretty accurate shows my speeds at just under 26 mb/s



Similar results from Speakeasy.net (sorry, not sure how to link my results from them...)

But results from testmy.net and a few others come in at under half that! One of them, don't recall offhand, shows 9.6mb/s for my download speed.

I assume this is due to speed test server loading / bandwidth saturation on their end, but I wanted to verify my thought process here. (Been a bad weekend, tired, brain not functioning well, need coffee!).

I know to expect some differences between sites due to things like routing etc... But the extremes I found a bit shocking...

 

[RealBeast]

I ran all three and Speakeasy was the odd download speed at 28.5/2.3Mbps with Speedtest at 50.87/2.32 and Testmy at 49.29/1.21.

 

[dbhosttexas]

What service level are you getting? Around here the 50mbps package runs about $150/month. More than I want to pay... The 30mb package goes for a little over 1/3 of that...

 

[RealBeast]

I'm pretty lucky here in Texarkana, for such a small city I am just on the fringe in the county close enough to have Cableone Internet, which they upgraded at no additional cost from 3Mbps to 50Mbps last year ($50 a month with the discount for having digital cable TV also for a total of $105). I don't use cable for telephone as I've always found it less reliable than a landline in the 5 or 6 times I tried it around the country.

I also have a backup 3Mbps DSL line, but that isn't used much; I only got it because the DSL plus nationwide long-distance was the same cost as the basic phone plan with no Internet or long-distance, plus I get an extra line for a fax machine at no cost (that gets used about every other month).

 

[dbhosttexas]

Any Linux admin jobs in Texarkana? I'd like to get away from the hurricane target that is the Houston metro area anyway... (I am only partially kidding...)

 

[RealBeast]

No, it's pretty dead economically here -- more job losses at the largest area employer Red River Army Depot recently. As an indicator, a beer distributor told me that sales have been down by over 5% year over year since June 2012! Seems from what I hear that things are a lot more active around Tyler.

 

[dbhosttexas]

Hmmm... Oh well. Guess I keep plugging away here and keep looking the I-5 corridor between Eugene and Seattle...

 

[RealBeast]

Yeah, Texas is different. I was up in the Bay Area for 7 years before East Texas.

 

[dbhosttexas]

Yeah, Texas is different. I was up in the Bay Area for 7 years before East Texas.

Eh, I am currently IN the bay area, it's just Galveston Bay that's all...