Fibre speed test - BT engineer gets faster speeds than I do

Associate
Joined
27 Oct 2002
Posts
66
Location
Newcastle
So, here's the situation and it has me completely bamboozled...

Got in touch with Plusnet to say that the speed we were getting was a lot less than advertised (mid 20s vs the promised 50-70) so they sent an engineer out who came yesterday. Long story short, he confirmed that the line was running at speeds in the mid 50s, and on running the speed test on the BT wholesale website, he was getting 50 down, 20 up.

When I run the same speed test on any of my laptops and mobile devices, I only get speeds measured in the mid 20s. This has been done on iPhone, iPad and Dell Laptop. He ran his tests using both ethernet and wifi through the same router as me, so I have no idea how his speed measures could be do so different to mine.

Does anyone in the know have any ideas what could cause this? Either his higher speed result or my lower one?

Cheers,
Tom
 
Soldato
Joined
29 Dec 2002
Posts
7,176
He tested wired direct to the router and got near the actual sync speed, then tested using his hardware via wifi near to the router again with decent hardware and optimum conditions. You tested via wifi and got the best connection your hardware could get via wifi to the router.

What really confuses me is why on earth did they would send an engineer out to a user end problem? If the line sync's in the advertised range and passes remote tests, and you presumably told them you were testing via wifi, then you should have been told to test via a wired connection direct to the router. Not doing so was just a waste of a truck roll :(

Normally I agree with @bledd, but clearly he has sun stroke at present, what he obviously meant to say was 'Use ethernet. If you have no other practical option, use WiFi.'
 
Last edited:
Associate
Joined
11 Jul 2017
Posts
816
Wifi very often does not achieve it's theoretical speed for more than a few seconds at a time. Often your wifi will report a speed far in access of what it can actually achieve over a prolonged period of time. In short wired is always best.
 
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