more slow internet

[Ralph Mowery]

I was checking the speed using the TWC speed test. I noticed that using an XP computer that an old version of MS internet explorer gave a lot better speed on the down load than Google Chrome did. Chrome did have a slight advantage on the upload.

Explorer would give 40 to 42 mb while Chrome was at 26. An hour later it was explorer 26 and chrome at 17. Both times it was explorer slightly less than 5 for the upload and chrome slightly over 5 for the upload.

Interisting that an old version of explorer would be that much faster than chrome. Looking at Youtube it seems that it takes a long time to load and play under chrome but almost instant on explorer.

[Don Y]

Browsers are among the most bloated pieces of software on the planet.

You might want to try a more "manual" test:

- find something "big", somewhere (e.g., a movie)

- download via browser of choice and see what browser reports for speed

- try the same using wget (which avoids the browser entirely and shows you what your connection+network stack are capable of)

[Steve Stone]

I've heard that you should only perform speed tests with wired (ethernet) connections, not wifi for accurate readings.

You may also have to take all but the device you are using for testing offline for the test duration.

Some people claim that monitoring the speed of a FTP file transfer is more accurate than the typical web browser based speed test.

This speed test site is a bit more detailed than the popular web based options:

[notbob]

Agree.

I have Centurylink DSL and not one of their high speed accts. Ona good day, I can see a true 1.6MB/sec, d/l. This using wget and an FTP server:

.....wget is an FTP retrieval client and I test my d/l speed by grabbing offa Univ of Utah FTP server. Try this file:

If you use wget, it will indicate the d/l speed. This real bandwidth speed, not jes a fancy representation of some alleged metered speed on some bogus testing site. A CL field tech once told me those speed test websites are all bogus. If you get wget installed, you would use this command:

The "filename" being that entire ftp://slackware.cs.utah.edu/ file, provided above.

nb

[DerbyDad03]

I guess that depends on what you are trying to determine.

When the TWC tech was at my house to try and solve some speed/performance issues, we ran speed tests on my iPad, my smartphone and his smartphone with the existing single band router. He then replaced it with a dual band router and we ran the speed tests again, with much improvement.

Since my wired PC was not having any issues, the speed tests over WiFi proved that there was an issue with the original router.

Perhaps, if you are trying to determine individual performance of a specific device under pristine conditions. However, if you are testing relative performance under normal operating conditions, the testing environment should resemble the norm, not the exception.

My TWC issue was that I was satisfied with the speed/performance of our home network when it was SWMBO and I using just 2 devices at any given time. However, when the girls were home from college and added their laptops and smartphones to the environment, our network slowed to crawl. The replacement of the router with a dual band appears to have solved those issues.

Individual speed tests on standalone, wired devices probably wouldn't have shown us anything.

[Frank]

I note it slows down around mid-afternoon. Might be time of day that more are on line. Maybe try at different times.

[Percival P. Cassidy]

64.7/4.70 with Charter. Claimed speeds are 60/4. Ethernet to switch to router to cable modem.

Perce

[Robert Green]

It would have shown you the problem was with the WiFi not the network. I always run both wired and wireless speed tests to see where the bottleneck is and it's almost always in the Wifi, not the ISP - but there are exceptions.

[DerbyDad03]

You snipped all the relevant portions of the post. We knew the wired worked just fine, even with the old router. The problem was obviously outside the wired portion of the network. By running WiFi speed tests before and after the router was replaced, we knew immediately that the router was the problem and not one of the WiFi devices itself hogging the network.

Knowing that the problem was WiFi related doesn't narrow it down to the root cause.

[Mark Lloyd]

My internet connection is 50Mbps down. That's what I get on a wired connection.

When I tried it on my first 802.11n connection (shown as 72.2M), I would get just about 38M download. Getting the wide channel connection (150M) fixed that, and I get the 50M I'm supposed to with either wired or WiFi.