 tschmidtPremium,MVM
join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH
kudos:8
 ·G4 Communications
·Fairpoint Commun..
 ·Hollis Hosting
| reply to AMDUSER
Re: The test is inaccurate... I ran the test twice; the first time jitter and latency were the same, which is impossible. Transfer speed measurement seemed reasonable accurate.
Overall I think having FCC do its own research is laudable but there are several serious caveats:
1) This is by no means a scientifically credible poll of US broadband.
2) We, like many others, have home network. To be an accurate determination of ISP performance no other computer should be using the Internet for the duration of the test. I did not see any mention of that on the test page.
3) Likewise applications on the test PC should not access the Internet for the duration of the test.
4) Performance testing is end-to-end. Issues outside the control of the ISP can degrade performance.
5) As already mentioned, temporary speed increases, will artificially inflate test performance.
/Tom |
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 funchordsHelloPremium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Yarmouth Port, MA
kudos:6 | said by tschmidt:I ran the test twice; the first time jitter and latency were the same, which is impossible. Transfer speed measurement seemed reasonable accurate. Overall I think having FCC do its own research is laudable but there are several serious caveats: 1) This is by no means a scientifically credible poll of US broadband. 2) We, like many others, have home network. To be an accurate determination of ISP performance no other computer should be using the Internet for the duration of the test. I did not see any mention of that on the test page. 3) Likewise applications on the test PC should not access the Internet for the duration of the test. 4) Performance testing is end-to-end. Issues outside the control of the ISP can degrade performance. 5) As already mentioned, temporary speed increases, will artificially inflate test performance. /Tom All true. There are several more issues. That said, these are data points in a set of gathered data. Once analyzed, some test results will be statistical outliers. In the end, analysts should be able to refine and clarify the picture by filtering out much of the noise.
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Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- District of Columbia -- KJ7RL
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 56403739Less than 5 months leftPremium
join:2006-03-08
Naples, FL
kudos:2 | reply to tschmidt
The M-Labs version is trash. The Ookla version tested three different lines in three different locations accurately and more consistently than the tests from this site do.
The speedtest.net site seems to do the best of all, though, since it looks for the best server for your location. |
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| reply to funchords
Rob,
With all due respect, any real honest statictician would have a hard time using any of this data, because it violates basic rules of sample selection bias. There are ways to correct for that, but nothing that could render anything worthwhile from these self-selected tests.
The FCC should take a cue from Offcom, and do a SamKnows style testing, which corrects for selection bias as well as all sorts of other intervening factors. |
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funchordsHelloPremium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Yarmouth Port, MA
kudos:6 | said by Bill Dollar:The FCC should take a cue from Offcom, and do a SamKnows style testing, which corrects for selection bias as well as all sorts of other intervening factors. I agree that something like this is necessary to get an accurate picture. Whether we'll get there sooner or later is an open question. In either case, what we did yesterday is a start.
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Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- District of Columbia -- KJ7RL
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