Speed Test

[AFPoster]

So I'm curious which one should I believe:

Both taken within seconds after the other, I do have Wideband Internet (50mb down 5 up) and Time Warner Cable said to use their Speed Test and not SpeedTest.net for better accuracy, normally that means "use us so we make you look better than what it really is".

Just curious, stuff still seems slow...

 

[shardey]

Try different servers on Speedtest.net. I have time warner, and they are by far the worst company around where I am from.

 

[alphaod]

Download a large file from a large content provider. That's the best metric since it removes artificial boosts (for example Comcast has PowerBoost for the first 50MB, I believe).

 

[deannnnn]

I'm also on Time Warner and just tried the two tests to compare. Surprisingly I got pretty similar results on both. No way my internet is as fast as it's being reported though (I don't have Wideband, too expensive). Maybe I'm getting better speeds because it's Tuesday at 4:45pm and there aren't a ton of people on.

 

[AFPoster]

TWC is great around my city (Charlotte, NC) I was just surprised they degraded SpeedTest. Downloaded a 1gb file - 23minutes.

 

[deannnnn]

TWC is great around my city (Charlotte, NC) I was just surprised they degraded SpeedTest. Downloaded a 1gb file - 23minutes.

If you were really getting 48 Mbps like the Time Warner speed test claims, then downloading a 1gb file should take way less than 23 minutes. More like... 3. I can get a 1gb file in about 20-25 minutes here and I don't pull in anywhere near 48 Mbps down.

My biggest annoyance with Time Warner is the upload speeds. Download speed is consistently okay to good, but my upload is frequently less than 1 Mbps. Time Warner thinks that people don't upload that much unless they are sharing files illegally, but I need to upload videos (that I make) to the internet all the time. I compress them and it still takes forever.

 

[NickZac]

Download a large file from a large content provider. That's the best metric since it removes artificial boosts (for example Comcast has PowerBoost for the first 50MB, I believe).

Comcast's PowerBoost speed ranges from about 5 to 20 Mbit/s. Last I read, it is the first 10-20 MB download and 5-10 MB upload, but the PowerBoost does not apply to all contracts. The lower end contracts do not include it nor do some enterprise ones. And I believe for how much of a download or upload that PowerBoost affects depends on the contract as well, and also the content that is being downloaded. However, the last I read on this was a few years ago. Our max download here with it for the 'premium' home internet, TV, and phone contract is like 20-30 Mbps but our upload is still pretty slow.

 

[AFPoster]

If you were really getting 48 Mbps like the Time Warner speed test claims, then downloading a 1gb file should take way less than 23 minutes. More like... 3. I can get a 1gb file in about 20-25 minutes here and I don't pull in anywhere near 48 Mbps down.

My biggest annoyance with Time Warner is the upload speeds. Download speed is consistently okay to good, but my upload is frequently less than 1 Mbps. Time Warner thinks that people don't upload that much unless they are sharing files illegally, but I need to upload videos (that I make) to the internet all the time. I compress them and it still takes forever.

See and for me I'm constantly seeing a good Upload speed of 4.2 - 5.04 and when I uploaded a small file it was instant (not saying I got a full 4-5mb).

As for my download I started the OS X Lion install in the Mac App Store since it was the biggest file I could find it was 23min for 1gb out of the 4. I'm calling them again today to talk with them, speed tests can show one thing but for damn sure it still takes a while to load pages, download content, etc.