Broadband Speed Question

[allenmertes]

Today I ran the Speakeasy speed test on my G5 iMac with a wired cable connection. My results were: Download: 2785kbps Upload: 386kbps.

I was fairly happy with these results until I tested the wireless connection speed of my 5 year old Dell laptop. The results: Download: 4542kbps Upload: 395kbps.

I have tried the test several times and the old Dell consistently leaves my iMac in the dust. I am really confused how the wireless connection could be outperforming the wired connection so greatly. Anyone have any ideas what may be causing the discrepancy, or any suggestions how to improve the speed on the iMac? Thanks!

 

[mad jew]

Online speed testers are very inaccurate for faster connections so to double check that there's a discrepancy, download a largish file from a server that'll give you a good connection and see if there's a difference.

 

[Makosuke]

Try a few others (Google for a half dozen) and see if the results are similar. Those things are remarkably twitchy when it comes to accurate measurements. Could have even just been test-to-test variation.

I was just goofing with some of these myself, because at&t (guess it's lowercase now) sent me a offer to upgrade from Pro to Elite DSL for like $3 a month more than I was paying. Figured I might as well.

Well, the modem reported the increased speeds the next morning (today) -- 6Mbit up from 3 and 750Kbit down up from 512. But when I ran a speed tester, I got something like 2.5Mbit down and 650K up. I'm quite happy with the upstream (that's the main reason I wanted to upgrade, anyway--I'm working from home via VNC and every little bit helps), but I'm confused as to why my download seems to be stuck where it was before despite the modem reporting a better connection. Same results on both G5 and MBP, wired or wireless.

It's not my distance from the telco, either--I'm literally one block away, and have extremely low line attenuation and decent signal-to-noise ratio.

Maybe it just takes time to kick in properly, or maybe the test is just reporting wrong. I'll need to wait for the 10.4.7 combo updater for a proper test of a provider I know can cough up at full speed. 6Mbit would sure be nice, though the thing I'm most looking forward to when I eventually move to Japan is the option for something like 25MBit DSL or 100MBit fiber (I have my doubts you actually get anywhere near that, but the max rates are absurd).

 

[Heb1228]

Online speed testers are very inaccurate for faster connections so to double check that there's a discrepancy, download a largish file from a server that'll give you a good connection and see if there's a difference.

If you try this, let us know the results, I'm interested in hearing.