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iansltx
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| reply to NetAdmin
Re: Old data and biased source - the CWA who hate telecom mgt
Speedtest.net is more comprehensive...they've conducted about 9000X more tests than SpeedMatters.
Check out their national graphs. The US appears to be on top with a 5425 kb/s average for download and is second to the Bahamas (but not by a huge amount, just about 10%) with 936 kbps upload averages.
Of course, most of the people using SpeedTest have high speed connections...
Interesting how SOuth America's average speeds by country are more in line with the US's average speeds with the SPeedMatters test. That is to say, the top 10 countries ranged from 955-1484 on connection speeds. Uploads are 250-530. Ech. On the other hand, even 250 is good for my connection right now.
In Europe, the US wouldn't even make it into the top 10 onconnection speeds, but Sweden tops out at 8870 kbps down, 2956 kbps up. Still fast but not what they were claiming, Uploads in Europe's top 10 range from 1806 to 4529 kbps. Again, faster than any North American average. But North America has bigger countries.
Australia is fastest in that part of the world, with 4191 kbps down, 464 kbps up. IOW we shouldn't be complaining about our internet by those standards, right? They're also capped the heck out of over there :/
In Asia the lowest "top 10" country is superseded in speed by the highest one by a factor of about 10. Japan is 14777 kbps down, Korea is 6783. Not as smoking as you'd think but still respectable. These are real-world speeds, remember  Hong Kong is actually second place when it comes to uploads, but anyway Japan takes the cake at 6886 kbps, faster than the US's download average. Impressive. Korea is 3416 kbps on upload. Respectable, but not as crazy as you might see on the whitepaper these guys put out.
Africa is just sad, with speeds ranging from 535 to 1358 kbps...as their top 10! Uploads on the top 10 range from 185 to 314 kbps. See, we don't have it that bad 
Just sayin'. At any rate, check out speedtest.net for a more accurate picture of internet speeds by country, continent, state and city. These guys' results are sort of bunk. Especially since RCN's speeds on Speedtest.net exceed anything on Asia's top 10, ISP wise.
Heh, just sayin' | |
NetAdmin
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join:2008-05-22
| said by iansltx  :At any rate, check out speedtest.net for a more accurate picture of internet speeds by country, continent, state and city. Their location data is suspect because they use GeoIP-like methods for guessing where a given host is located.
These guys' results are sort of bunk. Especially since RCN's speeds on Speedtest.net exceed anything on Asia's top 10, ISP wise. Speedtest users can shop servers, going from server to server getting the best results. So Speedtest.net is not even close to scientific or much better than the Speedmatters tests.
Most providers, including RCN, are nowhere near the speed of some of the other providers in other nations. | |
iansltx
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| Interesting, because they do a decent job of locating me: in the city I live near.
Also, shopping servers is fine. To get a true speed test result ou pick the server with the most capacity possible. I'm guessing that's why Speedtest.net doesn't put latency in the graphs
They also keep track of the IP doing the speed test, so they can do some normalization.
Additionally, is there really a better alternative than Speedtest.net's stats? Theirs is a TON more scientific than SpeedMatters. On the one hand you have 400+ million tests, and on the other 40,000, a number that isn't even statistically significant given the number of people using the internet in the US. Granted, Speedtest.net isn't US-only but I'm betting 100+ million of its results are. So yes, it is much mroe scientific to look at their results than Speedmatters'.
About RCN vs. other providers, I noticed when I looked at Europe that they had a lot of ISPs over there testing in the (real world) 40 Mbit range. That's cool. FiOS can do that too.
Responding to another post, Norway probably can't get ultra high speed access everywhere, and if it does, I'd hate to see how much is going from taxpayers' pockets to subsidize the access. | |
NetAdmin
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| said by iansltx :Interesting, because they do a decent job of locating me: in the city I live near. And? The point is that the method used for getting that information does not accurately determine position - zip code, etc. IP location services that attempt to guess your location like that have serious issues. All of those services that guess your location based on IP do a decent job estimating your location, but they are nowhere near accurate enough to be relied upon for zip, street, etc. information.
Also, shopping servers is fine. To get a true speed test result ou pick the server with the most capacity possible. I'm guessing that's why Speedtest.net doesn't put latency in the graphs
They also keep track of the IP doing the speed test, so they can do some normalization. That would be fine if all the ISPs gave their customers static IPs... As it is, most do not just hand out statics to residential customers, including the one I work for, so normalization is useless.
Additionally, is there really a better alternative than Speedtest.net's stats? Theirs is a TON more scientific than SpeedMatters. Not even close. Neither is scientific. Speedmatters, however, controls their test servers. Speedtest does not control all of the servers used for speed testing.
On the one hand you have 400+ million tests, and on the other 40,000, a number that isn't even statistically significant given the number of people using the internet in the US. Granted, Speedtest.net isn't US-only but I'm betting 100+ million of its results are. So yes, it is much mroe scientific to look at their results than Speedmatters'. Sorry, more data does not necessarily mean better data, especially when no quality control is performed on that data.
Responding to another post, Norway probably can't get ultra high speed access everywhere, and if it does, I'd hate to see how much is going from taxpayers' pockets to subsidize the access. And that is different than the US how? I will say that, at least in countries like Norway, people are willing to invest tax money into infrastructure. I can think of a dozen or so infrastructure projects in this country that need to be funded but aren't for whatever reason (the money probably went to something stupid like tax breaks for some special group or a museum on the preparation of pigs' feet in BFE). | |
iansltx
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| Customers' IPs wouldn't change while they're shopping servers for a better result.
Also, I said *some* normalization, not *total* normalization.
About SpeedMatters, 300 Mbit to one server and 45 to the other are NOT enough to give accurate speed test results, particularly if the servers are only homed into one network, and I'm betting that the 45 Mbit server was. Compare this with places like Data393 where they have multi-gigabit links available and you'll see that Speedmatters will have an obvious bias to the lower end on speeds.
Also, if Speedmatters had only two servers for speed tests overall, versus a few dozen that speedtest.net has (through various providers) then if they had enough tests to get "accurate" results the servers woul be too overloaded to give accurate results.
Also, are you saying that no trends can be taken from 400 MILLION tests, a lot of which are in the US, and that Speedmatters' number of tests is valuable for trending information though the same number of tests is taken by Speedtest.net every 1.5 hours or so? I don't buy it.
How about using BBR's speed test results, does that work better for ya? | |
NetAdmin
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join:2008-05-22
| said by iansltx :Customers' IPs wouldn't change while they're shopping servers for a better result. You are basing that statement on what? When an IP lease or PPPoE session expires, it expires.
About SpeedMatters, 300 Mbit to one server and 45 to the other are NOT enough to give accurate speed test results, particularly if the servers are only homed into one network, and I'm betting that the 45 Mbit server was. Considering you don't know the Speedmatters setup, trying to make arguments like this one is pointless.
Compare this with places like Data393 where they have multi-gigabit links available and you'll see that Speedmatters will have an obvious bias to the lower end on speeds. Actually, you can't make that assumption based on the information you have. There are far too many assumptions that have to be made.
Also, if Speedmatters had only two servers for speed tests overall, versus a few dozen that speedtest.net has (through various providers) then if they had enough tests to get "accurate" results the servers woul be too overloaded to give accurate results. How many is enough tests? You assume that you have to have enough tests that Speedmatters servers would be overloaded. Statistics says otherwise.
Also, are you saying that no trends can be taken from 400 MILLION tests, a lot of which are in the US, and that Speedmatters' number of tests is valuable for trending information though the same number of tests is taken by Speedtest.net every 1.5 hours or so? I don't buy it. You don't buy it because you don't know how to digest, process and interpret the data that is being present by either Speedmatters OR Speedtest.net. Neither dataset it very good, period. Trends can be taken, but because of the lack of control that Speedtest.net has over test servers, sites and the connectivity (there is no standard setup), their data has more issues. The Speedmatters setup is uniform and is less affected by site variability. If that concept escapes you, there is no reason to proceed since you've already made your mind up and won't change it, regardless of the data and reasons presented.
How about using BBR's speed test results, does that work better for ya? Even that data is suspect since the connectivity and setup for each server varies. | |
iansltx
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| Okay, here's the reason I won't take SpeedMatters' results, and this has been discussed at length in other posts: server overcrowding, such that an accurate speed test cannot be taken. Any connection faster than a few megabits is capped off artificially by the fact that the server can only handle a few hundred megabits of data pouring in at the same time...or 45 in the case of the west coast server.
Also, even if the SpeedMatters results WERE accurate, they were from a year-plus ago. I know my ISP has increased speeds by a third since then, as have a lot of other providers.
Go flame somewhere else. Maybe take a look at an XKCD comic or two. | |
iansltx
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Oh, and Data393 DOES have multiple gigabits of connectivity to the internet. Their website says so. Seeing as how they're a colocation\server facility I wouldn't be one to doubt that. So no, that "assumption" is not borne out. On several occasions (using a college link) I've gotten 75 Mbit/s both ways on the Data393 Speedtest.net server, an order of manitude more than SpeedMatters would likely support. Don't worry though,Speedtest.net filters university results out of their equation when it comes t internet speeds. | |
NetAdmin
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| reply to iansltx
said by iansltx :Go flame somewhere else. Maybe take a look at an XKCD comic or two. Clearly you need to learn what a flame is...  | |
NetAdmin
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join:2008-05-22
| reply to iansltx
said by iansltx :Oh, and Data393 DOES have multiple gigabits of connectivity to the internet. Their website says so. Seeing as how they're a colocation\server facility I wouldn't be one to doubt that. So no, that "assumption" is not borne out. Actually, yes there are still plenty of assumptions... What connectivity to their providers core network does the server have? What types of tweaks have been performed to Apache to improve performance that affect the validity of speedtests have been made? And those are just two you have to know before you can trust the reliability of the data you are presented with.
You can believe that the Speedtest.net tests are somehow more scientific or better than Speedmatters, but that is anything but true. The fact is, Speedtest.net data is based on non-uniform setups that aren't controlled by one group of people, ergo are not better than a server that may be overloaded. Period. | |
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