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Speed test results completely different

rik130

Regular Member
Hi. I noticed earlier when downloading a Twitch VOD that it seemed to be unusually slow and took about 10x as long as it would do normally. At first I thought it just the Twitch servers having a bad day as runs of the Speedtest app were showing my usual compliment of approx 100 Mbps download speed (EE 4G broadband via ethernet to B525).

I then ran a check on thinkbroadband and it gave me this (same on re-runs), 7.6 Mbps :







30 seconds later on Speedtest.net, 100 Mbps :

9198178758.png


What the heck is going on here? The download speeds on the VODs definitely mirror the speed quoted by thinkbroadband's results. I've just done a hard reset of my B525 and ran the tests again but still getting the same results from both. Any ideas what's going on here and is there a fix? I haven't downloaded a VOD for over a month so this is the first time I've noticed it. General internet stuff and youtube HD 1080p videos are all loading and buffering in advance just fine.
 
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Didn't realise the speedtest on ISPreview was the same one on TBB!

Anyway I tried speedtest.net and this one, and I got the same (poor) 25Mbps result. (I'm on Three home-fi).

Also of note is changing the server on speedtest.net produces massively varying results. Will continue to trust TBB test more personally.
 
It doesn't make sense. One of them must be lying or completely fake for there to be over a 10x difference in speeds. I couldn't perhaps understand it if the TBB server was connecting to New Zealand, but it isn't, it's a UK server (or so it claims) just like the ST one. Some small differences would be expected, but a 10x difference? Nope, sorry, someone is lying and it seems to be ST.
 
I think the fact you see different results from different servers is the issue here. You can't get a solid fix on the correct values because by adding server selection is just introduces more variables.
 
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I'm thinking EE might be prioritising speedtest.net data, and therefore you get the 'full speed', however for other (less popular/well known?) speed test sites the data isn't prioritised so it gets 'bundled' with the lower priority traffic, including your Twitch VOD.
 
That would be a possibility. Certainly a good way to pretend you're investing more in your network than you actually are, by producing better results.

If only the technical side of Three was as awesome as its marketing department eh!
 
Thanks for your thoughts gentlemen. Gavin : what would be the reason for doing that? If true about ST.net then isn't that rather underhand? People looking to move to new ISP or 4G broadband will most likely use ST.net to run their checks on before committing to a 12 month contract. If they show good speeds because they "prioritise" the ST.net website but it's effectively capped at 10 Mbps for the rest of the internet, that feels pretty shady to me.

This change is fairly recent - certainly within the past couple of months - as the VODs used to download fast and also TBB tests showed similar to ST.net.


Darsuke : thanks for posting that. It is very interesting and I guess proves that it's not my end. If you don't mind me asking, whereabouts in Yorkshire are you? I'm at the bottom of the 606 and connect to the mast at the top of the J26 slip road onto the M62 eastbound.

A 23GB 8 hr 36 min VOD has just finished downloading at 12.08pm. I started it around 3.30am.. Clearly not getting 100 Mbps that ST.net says !
 
A few mins on google searching from speedtest.net prioritisation produced a number of hits ! Seems like it is a thing as Gavin says. A few links :


 
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Darsuke : thanks for posting that. It is very interesting and I guess proves that it's not my end. If you don't mind me asking, whereabouts in Yorkshire are you? I'm at the bottom of the 606 and connect to the mast at the top of the J26 slip road onto the M62 eastbound.
LOL I'm on Leeds Road between J26 & J27 😂
Connect to the robinhood sports mast which was just upgraded to CA but hasn't stopped these annoying stalls.
 
Not sure where Leeds Rd is in that area. There's Whitehall Rd and Geldard Rd to Leeds. Are you in Birkenshaw? Unless you're down the southern end I doubt you've been on the same mast as me. Pretty sure mine is this one here: https://www.google.com/maps/@53.7431231,-1.7204785,84m/data=!3m1!1e3. But it might an issue with network in the general area, not mast specific, so make sure you file a network problem on EEs page https://myaccount.ee.co.uk/networkchecker/checkservice. The more of us in the area that do it, the quicker they'll realise something is broken and send the boys out to investigate. (y)
 
@Buggerlugz The OP is talking about EE here, not Three.

@rik130 (pretty much) all network providers use 'traffic management' to one extent or another, to ensure that the service they are provided with maintained and the type of traffic is generally what gets prioritised depending on how urgent they deem it to be e.g. P2P = low priority, VOIP = highest, etc.
They probably throw in some of the popular speed test sites into the higher categories so as you say, when someone tests their speed (or when speed test reports get publicly published) it looks good.

It might be in the wake of the coronavirus that EE have altered their management policies to reduce the strain on their network and ensure voice calls/VOIP/VoLTE as the highest priority, and as a result you're seeing reduced speeds as everything else is much lower priority.

Combine that with the potential that your local area is seeing a higher population since no-one is moving around during the day. The serving masts in your area might now be handling more connections/users than usual - that too could result in each device now getting a smaller slice of the limited pie. Though, saying that, I'd have thought mobile data usage would be reduced, rather than increased, since more people would be on their home wifi.

If you had a VPN to connect to, I'd expect you'd see speeds increase again (though how much would depend on the speed of the VPN), as VPN traffic is usually high priority and the tunnel created would avoid any traffic management policies of the network provider.
 
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