Speedtest volatility

SandLake

SandLake

SandLake

Associate
Joined
26 Feb 2021
Posts
25
Location
Antrim
Built myself an automated speedtester thanks to Jeff Geerling. Initially it was to diagnose a problem which it helped with very well. Everything seems to be running pretty well now. I have a fairly new 900Mbps download connection with 100 Mbps upload.
The speedtester uses speedtest.net every 5 seconds and records the result. It averages the results out over 7 days and I currently have 5 days of good speeds and it is showing 666 down and 96 up which as I say is pretty good, should be a bit better when I have a full 7 days of data.

The issue (if it is an issue) is the occasional spike, rarely but on occasion the download drops below 100Mbps and there are other more minor fluctuations.

Is that just the way it is? or should I investigate further - how?

Thanks

ibb.co

Grafana

Image Grafana in Sand Lake's images album
ibb.co ibb.co
 
Why are you running a test even 5 seconds? That's completely unnecessary.

Personally I would take Speedtest results with a pinch of salt, they are only indicative about what your connection can do, the results are affected by various factors outside of your control.

Also bear in mind, your 900 Mbps down connection is shared between up to 32 other customers on a 2.4 Gbps downstream fibre link (assuming you are on Openreach FTTP which it sounds like you are).
 
I think that necessary/unnecessary is irrelevant, I had noticed it was fluctuating, it was wildly fluctuating initially so I wanted to get a 'picture' of how bad that was, this has shown me that.

So, what you are saying is that the minor fluctuations now are just the way it is? Live with it. Fine, I'll do that - Thanks
 
Spamming speed tests for a week straight I'm surprised they haven't blocked your access for a while.
 
You run a speed test every 5 seconds? Speed tests can't even finish in 5 seconds... You are literally saturating your internet connection 24/7. Is there any bandwidth left for your household to do anything?

Of course your results are going to be highly inaccurate and volatile, it's entirely your own doing with the absurd testing every 5 seconds. You're likely just dropping the connection and restarting the test, before your line has even achieved the speeds to provide an actual real world result.
 
Speed tests should really be a troubleshooting tool, I think people will drive themselves mad scheduling them and plotting over time to then hopefully spot a problem. If your connection feels slow one evening then by all means verify things using the test, but people need to bear in mind that they are on a contended product. If everybody on your PON ran a speed test every five minutes just to monitor things then you'd end up creating an issue where previously there was nothing.
 
I don't agree that there is such a thing as "the speed you pay for" on a broadband service. A small amount of peak-time drop-off is the trade off you make to get a gigabit service for under £60 a month.

Jeff's example seems relevant to the US market, the rules here would prevent a service that never goes above 700Mbps from being advertised as 930Mbps.

There is no need to run a speed test every five minutes. What are you going to do with the results? If you open a support case with your ISP and say that you got 50% of the advertised speed at 19:25 and 19:30 before it went back up again, what do you expect to happen off the back of that report?
 
Nothing

But if it showed 860 one minute and 200 the next and so on and so on then I would open a case. As I say I had a very volatile connection for a while which - using this - I tracked down to my router. I still don't know why exactly but I know it was the router and I solved it.

I just left it running, it is by default set at 7 days so I plan to run it for 7 days to see the trend
 
One thing I have learned from having the 1Gb connection, I expected it to be snappier but it is not, not any different really from my 80/20 FTTC but it does download a lot faster.
 
No and No

Again if the connection was constantly going from 860 to 200 then I would expect the ISP to do something - I know that is not the case so I am not bothering the ISP.

I woud imagine the weeks worth of speedtests would equate to downloading an Ubuntu iso, or maybe 2.
 
Your constantly running speed tests, it's not going to feel snappy whilst your hammering your connection.
 
SandLake said:
I woud imagine the weeks worth of speedtests would equate to downloading an Ubuntu iso, or maybe 2.
Click to expand...

An Ookla Speedtest on a 1Gbps line that I just ran downloaded 1280.9MB of data. You're doing that 288 times per day, so in a week you're pulling down 2.5TB, purely of Speedtest data.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom