testing downloads speeds

Pants

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When using speedtest.net to check my WiMax speed from different servers I usually can't get over 1 Mbps. But when downloading an iso image like Ubuntu I can see between 180 and 250 MB/s which equates to approx. 1.5 to 2 Mbps down.

Is this because the speedtest.net servers are too busy?
 
I doubt it... speedtest.net has servers all over the US and probably other countries too.

Did you try multiple locations within the website? It is possible the server you selected is overloaded. However all of them wouldn't be at the same time.
 
Yes I tried different locations at speedtest.net...that's what I meant. ;) I HAVE gotten better speed out of speedtest.net when trying different locations, but lately they haven't gotten past 1 Mbps.
 
Last edited:
My comments from another thread. The thread is about wireless but also applies to wired as well.

There is no silver bullet.

Of course you can just run ping -t some.ip.add.ress > pingip.txt AND ping -t somedomain.com > pingdomain.txt. Use two dos sessions to run those so they are simultaneous.

However that is not always a good indicator of performance. Is there a particular reason for this question or is it just an academic exercise so to speak?

When I evaluate a network I always test wired and wireless. And I use multiple tools, making sure to log the sessions, if they are having performance issues. This is important as we all know ISP's will always blame everyone else before themselves.

Wired-
ping
traceroute to several IP's and domain's
wireshark

Wireless-
ping
traceroute to several IP's and domain's
wireshark (but that only captures my computer traffic)
inSSIDer (free)
Wi-Spy and Channelizer ($$$)


There are many other tools out there. One I ran into, which is really amazing, not long ago is called iperf. Developed by Distributed Applications Support Team (DAST) at the National Laboratory for Applied Network Research (NLANR) (wikipedia ref). There was a complete re-write and the new one is called iperf3.

It really is an awesome tool but you need to have a remote server running it as well. Basically lets you select tcp or udp as well as payload size.
 
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