how accurate are the dsl speedtests?

[JcT21]

hey all ....

i have att (bellsouth) dsl xtreme 6.0. whenever i test my speed on speakeasy, speedtest, testmy.net, and other sites my speed ranges from 5.7 through 6.4 depending on the time of day.... however when i test my speed at speed.fastaccess.com my speed is much slower and ranges from 768k through 3.2.

bellsouth tech support says that anything below 4.8 is unacceptable, though i get good results from other test sites. they even sent out a technician to change out my motorola modem for a new 2wire gateway. the results are still horrible on the bellsouth speed test but decent on other sites.

my download transfer rates are up around 750-800's so that seems to be about right too.

so.... anyone know why that would be like that? seems to me that bellsouth should give me the better result being its their dsl and everything... could i have a problem with what they call a "profile" on my account?

[Grentz]

Could just be the paths it has to take to get to their speed test server.

You will not have the same speed and latency to everything on the internet. Different servers will be under different loads and the paths to servers are not equal. Sometimes certain network segments are congested and other issues out of even your ISPs control may be happening.

As long as you are getting good speeds at the major speed test sites you should be fine.

Another good speed test is to download itunes from www.itunes.com or some of the Microsoft downloads. Apple and Microsoft usually have very good file download servers that can really max most connections.

[blmoore]

There are numerous things that affect these tests. Network latency, congestion of any link along the path, busy servers that provide the tests, and circuit issues along the way could all cause readings to be slower than what you would expect.

If you're running Ethernet from the modem to a switch or router, make sure you don't have a duplex mismatch (one side full duplex, the other half). This causes a serious impact on performance.