Intenet slow, but passes speedtest.net

[onsitecomps]

Hello,
I recently switched to comacast, and ever since my net is very slow when downloading files or torrents. I'm supposed to get 12MB/s down but only get 1.5 tops.
Wierd thing is, speedtest.net and dslreports.com both show me getting 20MB down and 4MB up.

I have tried bypassing my router with no luck. Had comcast techs out twice now, no luck. They upgraded modem and ran new cable.

Also, it is not a computer issue as I have 5 systems that do the same thing, plus a blueray player that has trouble streaming netflix smoothly.

Please help! Thanks

 

[eibgrad]

One of the problems w/ Speedtest.net and other similar services is that nothing prevents the ISP from detecting access to those servers and "opening the pipes" for that brief period. I know that sounds conspiratorial, but I wouldn't put it past them. You can never fully trust any of these well-known testing services. The only thing they actually report is what’s possible, not necessarily what’s typical.

Also, ISPs are known to throttle specific types of traffic, particularly those known to be bandwidth hogs (e.g., torrents). Things like Netflix, Hulu, etc., are not just bandwidth hogs, but COMPETITORS to the cable company's own offerings! It's my guess that THAT may be the real problem here.

What you might try (just as an experiment) is connecting to a quality VPN service (one known to provide good bandwidth) and see what the results are (you'd have to try it w/ a PC and Netflix, of course). Because the VPN creates an encrypted tunnel, it prevents the ISP (at least your ISP anyway, you might be affected by other ISPs once beyond the VPN provider) from detecting your intent/purposes, and thus far more reluctant to throttle your connection. It would just be a confirmation of my suspicions if suddenly NOW you got your bandwidth back.

 

[thendershot]

as far as i know comcast gives you like a minute or so of "uncapped" bandwidth so something like speedtest.net looks awesome.. even going out to microsoft.com and downloading a large service pack or iso you should notice it is faster at first and then slows down to a constant speed

 

[mymalathy]

My opinion is your speed is Good ,if you feel Your internet speed is slow,You can better reset the Modem once and plug out and plug in all the connection and then try testing the speed at here www.ip-details.com

 

[mathew7]

I don't know you knowledge, so I have to ask: are you talking about Mbits/s or Mbytes/s? Speedtest reports Mbits/s, which you usually have to divide by 8 to get MBytes/s. Torrent apps show in MBytes/s. So a 12Mbits/s link will not go above 1.5MBytes/s. Short-term burst may go above.