Are you being charged for your internet connection?
Are you being charged for your internet connection?
I'm trying to understand the actual speed I'm receiving and whether I'm being charged fairly. I'm based in Perth, Australia, using Telstra for a 100/50Mbps plan. My speeds seem to vary greatly depending on the service—Steam downloads and some sites work well, but YouTube and others only give around 8Mbps regardless of location. Could it be that my speed is based mainly on connections to Perth servers rather than actual performance? Is there a possibility my provider is throttling or routing traffic differently? Also, why do I sometimes get 50Mbps from some Sydeny servers while others only provide 8Mbps? This discrepancy might be normal due to distance, or could there be an issue with the speed tests?
Speedtest delivers reliable results. It seems Testmy.net's servers aren't up to the mark. According to what I've learned, in Australia fiber connections are typically FTTN rather than FTTH, meaning your connection speed varies based on proximity to the nearest node. ISPs might also limit performance at certain points. What you see is what you measure via speedtest.net and the downloads you perform. In short, if you're capped at 50Mbps, contact your provider and switch to a faster plan. You're essentially paying for speeds you can't achieve. By the way, you confirmed this using an Ethernet cable connected to your router—correct? Wi-Fi isn't as dependable as you think.
I'm connecting via Wi-Fi, but Ethernet delivers the same performance for me after my last test—it's not worth the effort of laying a 10m cable for just a few megabits faster. Changing plans doesn't make sense because I occasionally hit speeds over 80Mbps by chance, and the difference is minimal ($5) given a special offer. I'm confused about why my tests show only 8Mbps on sites like testmy.net and Steam servers in Sydney, while those same places give 50Mbps locally. I've heard testmy.net is the most reliable for real-world results.
Most Australian servers are located in Sydney, which means a large portion of online services from Australia rely there, like streaming and gaming servers. For speed, I wouldn’t expect YouTube to use the same infrastructure as those slower ADSL connections. This is why I believe TestMyNet provides more accurate results for real-world conditions in Sydney. Edit: Essentially, it appears only certain servers perform well while many deliver around 8Mbps, suggesting potential throttling for other connections.