Speedtest site accuracy [was: Bandwidth issues in the Sprint network]

Tue Apr 8 20:20:04 UTC 2008

Doug Clements wrote:

> We tell our customers to make sure to use the test site on our
> network, which will be quite a bit more accurate than some random
> location on the internet they might pick.
> 
> There's no reason it can't be reasonably accurate, if you care to
> address it. We normally get within a few percent of a given line rate
> ranging over normal DSL speeds to T1s to DS3s to Fast Ethernet. It's a
> very easy and user-understandable way to say "Your T1 is installed,
> there's no errors that we see, you're getting about 1.4mbit on the
> speed test, have a nice day", or, alternately, "You're getting
> 95mbit/sec down and only 45mbit/sec up, you probably have a duplex
> mixmatch on your newly installed colo server".
> 
> --Doug
> 

  Regarding speed test software, what are people running, and what do 
you think of it?

  It was surprisingly hard to find such stuff the last time I looked - 
right now I've got the guy who decide$ looking at the same software that 
http://speedtest.vonage.com appears to be running. Downside is that it 
requires Java.

  The stuff we've got (it was here before I was, 5 years ago) is 
definitely showing it's age - it doesn't even have the capability to do 
upload speed tests, and it's "quick test" while adequate for 1.5mb DSL's 
gets really flaky when you toss a 6 or 8mb/sec DSL at it.

-- 
Jeff Shultz