News - Virgin Media reckons speedtests are still misleading

[HEXUS]

Survey of a range of broadband speedtesting services uncovers inconsistencies and inaccuracies.

Read more.

[Singh400]

I reckon Virgin Media are misleading

/thread

[shaithis]

Shame they don't show the speed tests of their service once the throttling kicks in

[Tidus]

I agree that speedtests are misleading, my connection currently syncs at 17.5mb and after running a test on speedtest.net I was told I had a ping of 550 and a 6mb connection, I found broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk to be the most useful site showing my connection as 12.5mb down but the upload test was useless.

After testing my connection myself I managed to get a download of 1654KB/s off a server and 1.7MB/s from Torrents, my pings from gaming on my PS3 were around 30 on dedicated servers and 20 - 22 to websites like bbc.co.uk and google.com.

Speedtest sites should make people wait before the test starts then perform the test when they have more bandwidth to give acurate results, they also need to use larger files to test ADSL2 connections, the upload tests are over in a couple of seconds due to the size of the files transfered.

Some basic instructions before people start the test would be a good idea aswell, telling them to turn off any P2P applications or download services and recommend using a LAN cable rather than wireless, my wireless DL'd is very poor.

[Singh400]

ThinkBroand's test is the most accurate for one. Speedtest.net one is useless. Another good one is bbmax speed test.

[moogle]

ThinkBroand's test is the most accurate for one. Speedtest.net one is useless. Another good one is bbmax speed test.

bbmax = london speedtest.net server

Just test on a multitude of servers to see the different speeds. Of course no 1 server is going to show you your full speeds but with a better connection you'd have higher speeds all round on all servers rather than one.

[Singh400]

bbmax = london speedtest.net server

Just test on a multitude of servers to see the different speeds. Of course no 1 server is going to show you your full speeds but with a better connection you'd have higher speeds all round on all servers rather than one.

Waaahheeeyy? No way! I get much better results with http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/ than http://www.speedtest.net/!!

But ThinkBroadban's rules them all.

[aidanjt]

Here's a speed test, download a Linux ISO image from one of Virgin's mirrors. If it doesn't do 50mbps, then you know that it's Virgin who is lying and this is just an exercise in throwing the rattler out of their pram.

[zoomee]

As someone who told virgin where to stick they're 50MB free trial after 4 weeks of use - I have to agree with the person saying Virgin is throwing the rattler

[mehmeh]

LOL @ this!

In Virgins defense though, bet they get allot of customers who still ring tech support complaining eBay or their emails are going slow and then have to explain to these customers that once you get to the dizzy heights of a few hundred k a second it makes very little difference to average web browsing and if a sites busy, a sites busy regardless of how "phat" your "pipe" is. Same can be said when expecting to download from every server at 50Mb. So I guess speedtests are the only way Joe Public knows he's getting that 50Mb...

...Now he knows that, all he's gotta do is figure out what he's gonna do with it for the ten minutes it'll take them to throttle it back off him.

Deffo toys outta the pram though, if only they invested half as much effort in Customer Service as they did in passing the buck, eh?

[zoomee]

I was quite suprised to learn first hand that the PING for this XXL (50mb) service is twice higher than theyre XL service (20mb) - for example - ping on average was 25ms for 20mb - with 50mb its 50ms!! - thats like easynet ADSL styles!!!

[Betty_Swallocks]

I have to agree with Virgin to a certain extent.

The speed you are paying for is from their systems to you, not to some random speed test site across the internet. Virgin have no control over the route your data takes, just from them to you. There could be many points of slowdown. Doing a tracert on www.speedtest.net for example takes 18 hops and goes via London, New York, Chicago and Denver. Hardly ideal although that is for the main site not the actual test server. It would be interesting to see the route taken by actual test data.

I have the 20Mb service and Speedtest.net never shows me more than about 14meg, but when I'm downloading stuff from Giganews I always get in excess of 2000kb/s which afaik represents my full 20Mb

[Singh400]

I have to agree with Virgin to a certain extent.

The speed you are paying for is from their systems to you, not to some random speed test site across the internet. Virgin have no control over the route your data takes, just from them to you. There could be many points of slowdown. Doing a tracert on www.speedtest.net for example takes 18 hops and goes via London, New York, Chicago and Denver. Hardly ideal although that is for the main site not the actual test server. It would be interesting to see the route taken by actual test data.

I have the 20Mb service and Speedtest.net never shows me more than about 14meg, but when I'm downloading stuff from Giganews I always get in excess of 2000kb/s which afaik represents my full 20Mb

Come on! Confounded by spin, I think you are. Virgin are known for the traffic management/throttling. Virgin have complete control over their network and speeds.

[moogle]

Well I believe I'm paying for that speed in the same way (me to ISP), but a better ISP has better all round speeds to more sites. You shouldn't just rely on one speedtest site to judge your speed anyway.

Isn't 2000kb/s 16meg? I thought Virgin don't have "up to" speeds because they're "fiber optic"?

[Betty_Swallocks]

Come on! Confounded by spin, I think you are. Virgin are known for the traffic management/throttling. Virgin have complete control over their network and speeds.

My point exactly. They have complete control over their network but unless you only ever visit sites hosted by them then you can't realistically expect them to guarantee full speed downloads.

And I did say in excess of 2000KB/s. A quick test to Giganews shows me getting just under 2400KB/s

[moogle]

Some basic instructions before people start the test would be a good idea aswell, telling them to turn off any P2P applications or download services and recommend using a LAN cable rather than wireless, my wireless DL'd is very poor.

They gotta hand out common sense as well as a free test?


Anyway most of the time even closing all your network apps still can't guarantee you get the accurate result if you have others on your network.

I just see this as Virgin Media only taking an interest into this because most of the time their tested speeds are lower than others because users notice their net speed slowing down (due to throttling) and going to check on these speedtests sites to find out they are being throttled.

No speedtest is misleading really if one can understand why it is giving such fast speeds or slow. You test on a range of speedtest sites or large file downloads to see the real average speed, I test on a server (London/Maidenhead) because they always give me full speeds and if they differ alot to the usual I try other sites.

I don't think theres anything real wrong with the speedtest sites just the way people use them.