Accuracy of mbps speed tests ? (TWC vs Verizon)

[renrinken]

Hello all, I been a twc customer for years. But recently I moved to a area that only had Verizon as a IP.

During my time as a twc customer, I regularly got around 8-12 mbps from various speedtests. Even at 10 mbps I noticed my connect to be mediocre, even struggling to stream 1080p youtube videos.

Once I was told that Verizon was capped at 5mbps I was pretty nervous. But after getting the service, I notice everything seems slightly faster. 1080 videos load faster, page loads easier, etc.

So this sort of baffles me, how can a tested 5mbps get equal or better speeds then a 10mbps. Are these tests even accurate ?

For a example, I am buffering 1080p videos almost twice the speed as before with half the mbps. Also I assume line traffic is calculated in speed tests so doubt its a issue of phone vs cable.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

So this sort of baffles me, how can a tested 5mbps get equal or better speeds then a 10mbps.

Easy, higher latency on the 10Mb/sec line. The Time Warner system (at least when I spent time there) was notorious for overloaded routers and poor routing causing very high latencies.

 

[renrinken]

Easy, higher latency on the 10Mb/sec line. The Time Warner system (at least when I spent time there) was notorious for overloaded routers and poor routing causing very high latencies.

I am not all that knowledgeable with the technical side of networking but I assume latency and ping is similar or the same (or atleast I always assumed so). Ping on my twc account always was pretty low, 15-30ms and my new verizon ping seems to be the same.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

A "ping" return is only one small part and should never be used as anything other than a connectivity check. Ping in Windows uses ICMP packets, which on almost every router is given the absolute lowest possible priority (sometimes even simply dropped).