Speed Test Results

Octavio Alvarez alvarezp at alvarezp.ods.org
Fri Dec 23 16:19:31 UTC 2011


On Fri, 23 Dec 2011 01:18:40 -0800, jacob miller <mmzinyi at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Am having a debate on the results of speed tests sites.
>
> Am interested in knowing the thoughts of different individuals in  
> regards to this.

They are just a measurement, which need to be correctly used and
interpreted (that's the difficult part).

Reading bad numbers is not necessarily an indication of a link problem.

Reading "good enough" numbers is only meaningful for the duration of the
test.

To me, the big problem is that they don't state all the details of the
tests (for example, how exactly to they do the transfer). Geographical
location is good, but sometimes not enough. Do they use http, https, ftp
or their own JS implementation of whatever weird protocol they though of?
How do I know if I'm hitting my firewall, web cache or ALG?

I only use them to get a generic overview of the link.

-- 
Octavio.

Twitter: @alvarezp2000 -- Identi.ca: @alvarezp




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