Speed test acts weird

[sonarctica]

So recently my internet speed has started being majorly shit, now I wonder if this is because of my ISP, the copper wires that run into my house, my modem or just my PC / cable being crap. I pay for 24 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up and I only get around 7 Mbps down and 0.80 Mbps up. Takes about 4-10 seconds to load up google on every browser...

 

When I do the speed test, it jumps to ridiculous 35 Mbps suddenly and comes right back down to 2-3 Mbps and then comes to the conclusion that my internet speed is around 9.3 Mbps. You can see it in the diagram that it's very jumpy for whatever reason, I've also tried other speed test type of things and they do the same thing so it's not just speedtest.net (I have tried many different servers). We hooked up my friends laptop to the modem, and his diagram was completely steady and wasn't jumpy at all, we used the same cable as well. Could it be the NIC in my MOBO that's broken?

 

Does anyone else have this problem?

 

[rustikles]

Yeah there's something wrong with one of the reasons you listed (ISP, PC, etc.). From my use, speedtest usually jumps high to max out connection then just slowly falls back down to a stable speed, nothing like that sawtooth you're getting.

[Morfy]

You ISP may be throttling your connection, but i'm not sure.

[GamerDad]

There are a lot of reasons why you are getting such a result:

 

ISP - Your ISP might be throttling you. This could be because Speedtest.net is trying to max out your connection as a strain test before finding a stable speed which can't happen because of the throttling. This is unlikely if your friend's laptop is seeing a stable connection.

 

Router - I'm not sure if you're using one but your router could be throttling the connection if you have too many devices online. Also unlikely given your friend's results.

 

Modem - Your modem might not have a stable connection to your ISP. Your friend's results also make this unlikely.

 

Cabling - Your home's wiring might be getting some interference. Not much can be done about that beyond replacing the cables. Again, very unlikely.

 

Given that your friend is seeing stable connections using your own modem, the problem could very well be with your MOBO or network card (depending what you are using the handle the connection to the modem. The best way to test this is to see if you could get your hands on a spare network card and connect using that. If it works just fine, you'll know what's not working. Once you narrow down the cause of the problem, we'll be able to help troubleshoot it more effectively.

[tom564]

One thing that can cause speedtest to produce jumpy results could be a firewall on the computer or on the network or antivirus on the computer that is doing real time scanning. 

[sonarctica]

There are a lot of reasons why you are getting such a result:

 

ISP - Your ISP might be throttling you. This could be because Speedtest.net is trying to max out your connection as a strain test before finding a stable speed which can't happen because of the throttling. This is unlikely if your friend's laptop is seeing a stable connection.

 

Router - I'm not sure if you're using one but your router could be throttling the connection if you have too many devices online. Also unlikely given your friend's results.

 

Modem - Your modem might not have a stable connection to your ISP. Your friend's results also make this unlikely.

 

Cabling - Your home's wiring might be getting some interference. Not much can be done about that beyond replacing the cables. Again, very unlikely.

 

Given that your friend is seeing stable connections using your own modem, the problem could very well be with your MOBO or network card (depending what you are using the handle the connection to the modem. The best way to test this is to see if you could get your hands on a spare network card and connect using that. If it works just fine, you'll know what's not working. Once you narrow down the cause of the problem, we'll be able to help troubleshoot it more effectively.

Thanks for taking the time, I will try to get a hold of a network card and test it again and come back here to tell the results.

 

One thing that can cause speedtest to produce jumpy results could be a firewall on the computer or on the network or antivirus on the computer that is doing real time scanning. 

I tried to disable my antivirus and firewall, no luck ^^

[GamerDad]

You might also want to run this driver test to see if your MOBO might have outdated drivers that could be causing your problem: http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/detect

[Claude Brown]

Just out of interest, what motherboard do you have, and through what is your computer connecting to the internet? Because, I recently had the exact same problem; it turned out to be a fault with the antenna that came with my motherboard. Naturally, I fixed this issue by upgrading to a new PCI wireless card. Like what Elite said, if you could get your hands on a wireless card, you could better deduce what the problem is. Hope this was helpful.

[sonarctica]

You might also want to run this driver test to see if your MOBO might have outdated drivers that could be causing your problem: http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/detect

Well that intel test only said I have outdated Java but that's it. I'll see if there is any updates for my MOBO, thanks.

Just out of interest, what motherboard do you have, and through what is your computer connecting to the internet? Because, I recently had the exact same problem; it turned out to be a fault with the antenna that came with my motherboard. Naturally, I fixed this issue by upgrading to a new PCI wireless card. Like what Elite said, if you could get your hands on a wireless card, you could better deduce what the problem is. Hope this was helpful.

I have a ASRock z68 extreme3 gen3 and I'm using a ethernet cable to connect to my modem. I am still trying to get my hands on a NIC card... also I did speedtest on my phone and it was smooth like a babies butt at 10Mbps.

[sonarctica]

So I just tested another laptop with the same cables and stuff, it went smoothly again, so I'm guessing my MOBOs NIC is broken... I should probably RMA it.

[sonarctica]

So... as soon as my new NIC card got shipped to me, the diagram is smooth as hell at 10Mbps... so I guess it fixed itself..? This is a complete mystery to me.