is fast.com speed fake

[gt710]

i think if i remember my speed is 250mbps down
but doing a test on speedtests website i get on average  240mbps down

but on fast.com i get 270mbps - 300mbps is this fake

[CyberneticTitan]

Not all speedtests are implemented the same way and how they are reported can vary between them as well.

 

Fast.com is run on Netflix backbone so your ISP may just have good peering with them.

 

If you want to read more how that figure is reported: https://ripe74.ripe.net/presentations/105-Ripe74-Fast.com-1.pdf

[Alex Atkin UK]

15 hours ago, CyberneticTitan said:

Not all speedtests are implemented the same way and how they are reported can vary between them as well.

 

Fast.com is run on Netflix backbone so your ISP may just have good peering with them.

 

If you want to read more how that figure is reported: https://ripe74.ripe.net/presentations/105-Ripe74-Fast.com-1.pdf

I think the key point from the document is: Protocol overheads are hard to get right.

 

It has a tendency to over-estimate.  Like a test just now gave me 990Mbit, while my router reported speed peaked at 920Mbit.

 

Also as most traffic in the browser is single threaded, going into settings and switching from 8 parallel connections to just 1 gives a more realistic real-world figure.  Although things like Steam downloads ARE multi-threaded so 2-4 may be more representative of that, 8 (the default) seems overkill.

 

Overall, I've found that most of the time speedtest.net is more accurate to my real-world performance.