NormanH Posted September 2, 2012 Share Posted September 2, 2012 I have a reasonable speed connection when I connect to French servers in the evening[URL=http://www.speedtest.net][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/2155837855.png[/IMG][/URL]However when I test my speed against UK servers the picture is less rosy[URL=http://www.speedtest.net][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/2155845773.png[/IMG][/URL]these two results were at 30 second intervalsIt's not quite so bad for other European countries[URL=http://www.speedtest.net][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/2155850528.png[/IMG][/URL][URL=http://www.speedtest.net][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/2155853087.png[/IMG][/URL]Is there a problem between France and the UK, or is the London Internet Exchange congested?Any ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woolybanana Posted September 2, 2012 Share Posted September 2, 2012 Well, assuming that internet fones to UK use the same system, mine has been playing up for weeks, UK end. And the ipad is not too hot at the moment either, also to UK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
suein56 Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 [quote user="NormanH"]I have a reasonable speed connection when I connect to French servers in the eveningHowever when I test my speed against UK servers the picture is less rosyIt's not quite so bad for other European countriesIs there a problem between France and the UK, or is the London Internet Exchange congested?Any ideas? [/quote]Just out of interest I tested my speed here in at-the-end-of-the-line here in deepest southern Morbihan - normally about 4.9Mb/s - and found huge differences depending which server I chose. For example in Paris Aubervilliers, hosted by Bouygues Telecom, at 2.6Mb/s was only just over half as fast as Paris, hosted by SFR at 5.1Mb/s.The surprise, though, was choosing Madrid - never thought to try that before - as it was at 5.1Mb/s.If I choose the server closest to me - at Rennes, hosted by perf.fr, then the speed dropped to 2.2Mb/s.So, in response, no ideas but it was interesting.Sue Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woolybanana Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 How do you choose servers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
suein56 Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 By not clicking on Start Test straight away, as that will direct you to the server Speedtest have chosen for you. All the white lights you can see are servers. Even within Paris - highlighted in green for me - you have a choice of server, just hover your cursor over any light and the name of the server will appear. You click on that to choose it.You can also scroll down the map and choose another country.Edit: if this works then here are my figures for Lyons:[URL=http://www.speedtest.net][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/2156520631.png[/IMG][/URL]and Paris with SFR:[URL=http://www.speedtest.net][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/2156528709.png[/IMG][/URL]The interesting thing for me is we had this speed in our old house, but SFR could only promise 4.4Mb/s for the new house back when I told them we were moving. Only 7kms away but via a different exchange. We got 4.9Mb/s when we moved in in May, now it seems to be 5.2 pretty consistently.Things are improving; though we will never reach Norman's dizzy speeds.And my machines are state of the ark, at 6 years old apiece, definitely not state of the art.Sue Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pickles Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 [quote user="NormanH"]Is there a problem between France and the UK, or is the London Internet Exchange congested?Any ideas?[/quote]I'd vote for the congestion theory: I suspect that there are higher demands than normal due to the Proms and Olympics: streaming takes up a huge amount of bandwidth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chancer Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 Erm, why would you want to choose a server in another country when running a speedtest? Doesnt your internet supplier connect you through the nearest one to you geographically?You can tell I dont know much about this although like others have played with different server locations, no idea why aprt from boredom curiosity.If you find a much faster one can you tell your computer to connect via that one?If thats the case why be concerned about slower ones? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NormanH Posted September 3, 2012 Author Share Posted September 3, 2012 Because I am trying to find why my connection to streaming in the UK is so slow using VPN (for iPlayer) 1) I test my connection in France to check all is going ok with Free2) I test my connection to the UK, because that is where I will be connecting to, to see if that connection is OK without VPN, as I can expect a 20/30% reduction after, once I am connected though VPN, and I am trying to establish the base figure.As I found a huge slow down when connecting to UK servers I tried connecting to servers in Germany and Spain to see if it was Europe wide or just when I connect to the UK. This seems to be the case.I haven't put the results using VPN up, as that just adds an extra variable, but there is not much point even trying when the speed to the UK generally is so slow even without VPNYou need over 2.5 (about) to stream. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quillan Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 Speedtest is OK up to a point because you don't know what it is going through to get to it's destination. A far better way is to trace the route, with a Windows PC you would use tracert (Traceroute for Apple and tracepath with Linux) the only problem could be is finding the IP address of the server you want to connect to. This will show what routers and other servers you are gong through, the time between each one and the cumulative time end to end. You can of course 'ping' the server but that won't show the 'route' you are taking to get there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnOther Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 I think the internet would be a better place without all these speed testers causing people to lose sleep.Norman, download Visual Route Lite and it will tell you where your bottle necks are occurring, not that knowing will help necessarily ![IMG]http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p123/biskitboyo/VisualRoute.jpg[/IMG]Incidentally I can stream the iPlayer perfectly well on 2mb [;-)] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NormanH Posted September 3, 2012 Author Share Posted September 3, 2012 I don't think it works for Linux [:(]but I am using Traceroute and a Firefox add on.The reason for the tests is that I felt that my VPN provider wasn't delivering the goods, and I wanted to see if it was at that end or in the France/UK connection even without VPN.They have given me a different server with lower latency and I will be testing again tonight to see what I get Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnOther Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 Didn't appreciate that you were handicapped Norm [Www] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BJSLIV Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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