Low BW between Mountain View and OR -- why?

Tue Feb 17 06:17:04 UTC 2015

Hi,

I have a server in Mountain View and i am doing a speedtest with a server
in Oregon. I see that the upload/download BW that i am getting is low --
around 10.0Mbps and 5.0Mbps.

gkent at ubuntu:~/ics$ speedtest-cli --server 4082
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Testing from Comcast Cable (50.250.251.210)...
Hosted by Eastern Oregon Net, Inc. (La Grande, OR) [913.33 km]: 120.959 ms
Testing download speed........................................
Download: 5.08 Mbits/s
Testing upload speed..................................................
Upload: 10.89 Mbits/s

When i check my connectivity with a server in NYC, its much better, though
the server is much further away.

gkent at ubuntu:~/ics$ speedtest-cli --server 2947
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Testing from Comcast Cable (50.250.251.210)...
Hosted by Atlantic Metro (New York City, NY) [4129.02 km]: 307.568 ms
Testing download speed........................................
Download: 38.52 Mbits/s
Testing upload speed..................................................
Upload: 10.62 Mbits/s

I am trying to understand why this is so? I would wager that NYC being
further away would give me a worse throughput than OR, but the speedtest
tells me otherwise.

The 2nd and more puzzling observation is that while OR is giving a download
of around 5.08Mbps, it will improve and become much better later in the
day. There are times when i see it going up as high as 48Mbps.

Sometimes while a transfer is in progress i see that my download suddenly
goes down from 48Mbps to 2Mbps.

Can somebody here tell me why such a drastic fluctuation is seen?

Thanks, Glen