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Speed Test

speed.cloudflare.com

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Re: Speed Test

#21

Post by xnorswap »

maccard wrote: post #13
johneth wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read that often ISPs make exceptions for Ookla and fast.com speed tests by removing any sort of throttling to produce the best possible test results. I expect it isn't as easy for ISPs to treat Cloudflare like this, as it just looks like normal internet traffic.

Got a source for ISPs doing that for fast.com? Fast.com is netflix, so the same argument applies there - if you get 300mbps on fast.com you should get it on netflix too

Indeed, that's part of what motivated netflix to make fast.com.

Re: Speed Test

#22

Post by LoganDark »

maccard wrote: post #13
johneth wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read that often ISPs make exceptions for Ookla and fast.com speed tests by removing any sort of throttling to produce the best possible test results. I expect it isn't as easy for ISPs to treat Cloudflare like this, as it just looks like normal internet traffic.

Got a source for ISPs doing that for fast.com? Fast.com is netflix, so the same argument applies there - if you get 300mbps on fast.com you should get it on netflix too

This is why Netflix runs fast.com, so that if an ISP wants to cheat on speed tests, people are still going to get those cheated speeds even when they stream real Netflix videos. Really clever.

Re: Speed Test

#23

Post by wilkystyle »

maccard wrote: post #13
johneth wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read that often ISPs make exceptions for Ookla and fast.com speed tests by removing any sort of throttling to produce the best possible test results. I expect it isn't as easy for ISPs to treat Cloudflare like this, as it just looks like normal internet traffic.

Got a source for ISPs doing that for fast.com? Fast.com is netflix, so the same argument applies there - if you get 300mbps on fast.com you should get it on netflix too

This was my understanding, too. Anecdotally, I've always seemed to get slower results on fast.com compared to Ookla/speedtest.net/my ISP's speedtest website (the latter of which all seemed to show similar results, leading me to believe that fast.com was exempt from this sort of prioritization).

Re: Speed Test

#24

Post by LoganDark »

cpfohl wrote: post #15
eviks wrote: post #3

No way to use bytes instead of bits in the output?

Not how it’s usually measured…link speed is pretty much always in bits/s

I don't measure file size in bits. I don't want to multiply/divide by 8 when roughly estimating how long a download will take. I end up doing 10 instead for maximum ease and pessimism.

Re: Speed Test

#26

Post by jonathanlydall »

sorenjan wrote: post #5

I have a 250 Mb/s connection, but this claims I have over 440 Mb/s download speed. When looking closer at the details I get 250 Mb/s on all tests except the 1 MB download, so it's probably because of some compression or caching or similar, but I don't get the point of the larger tests if they don't affect the final score. I have never downloaded anything faster than 250 Mb/s before, so this is not a good reflection o…

I suspect that your line has a configured limit as opposed to physical limit of 250mb/s (perhaps the fibre equipment is capable of 500mb/s or something).

I've seen this ever since I moved to fibre about 8 years ago, I've never taken the fastest packages and whenever I test on speedtest.net it always starts off exceeding my limit, then comes down to my limit over a short while.

The limiter for you may very well allow you to burst for a limited duration, so your speed on 1MB files are possibly at 440mb/s, but once you have sustained line usage it brings you down to your limit. I wouldn't know if this is an intentional feature or just because of how the limiter solution is implemented that it needs to sample over a certain period of time.

It is a slightly useful behaviour if you're browsing the web and only occasionally clicking links which land up being downloaded way faster than your normal limit, but as you're only getting this speed if you do little to nothing for the 10s or 100s of seconds between opening pages, it doesn't have any negative effects over all.

Re: Speed Test

#27

Post by jnsaff2 »

Uff. Apparently gives correct readings mostly in Chrome only.

I have a 500/500M connection and on the same computer Chrome gives 465/364 and Firefox has 311/303M.

EDIT: this was on Linux/intel.

On Mac M1Pro it Chrome/FF/Safari all get pretty much the same numbers.

Both computers have wired ethernet.

Re: Speed Test

#28

Post by natrys »

Where I am, ISPs have arrangements to give intra-country traffic higher speed than inter-country. The nearest cloudflare PoP this chooses is always inside the country, so it gives misleading result.

Re: Speed Test

#29

Post by jnsaff2 »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #26
sorenjan wrote: post #5

I have a 250 Mb/s connection, but this claims I have over 440 Mb/s download speed. When looking closer at the details I get 250 Mb/s on all tests except the 1 MB download, so it's probably because of some compression or caching or similar, but I don't get the point of the larger tests if they don't affect the final score. I have never downloaded anything faster than 250 Mb/s before, so this is not a good reflection o…

I suspect that your line has a configured limit as opposed to physical limit of 250mb/s (perhaps the fibre equipment is capable of 500mb/s or something). I've seen this ever since I moved to fibre about 8 years ago, I've never taken the fastest packages and whenever I test on speedtest.net it always starts off exceeding my limit, then comes down to my limit over a short while. The limiter for you may very well allow…

I have seen similar shaping. This gives a quick responsive browsing experience but throttles bigger downloads/streaming.

It also can be implemented badly. Azure VNET peering had 200M level and 100M level. Where 200M level was 200M most of the time, whereas 100M level was 200M for 30s and 0M for the next 30s.

Re: Speed Test

#30

Post by IntelMiner »

pseudo_meta wrote: post #18

btw, on macOS, you can just enter `networkQuality` into your terminal for a speed test. No third-party website or tool of any kind needed, it's a built-in mac CLI.

Who's it measuring against? An (internet) speed test by its nature requires some remote third-party, if you aren't just testing to your own server
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