Speedtest showing much faster than actual speed

[NotSoHonestAbe]

This is what my speed test shows:

It's not the fastest, but I did recently upgrade from a connection that speedtest showed to be about 256 kbps download. But when downloading anything on steam, utorrent, chrome, etc. I get maybe 500 kbps. I know I can't expect exactly 8.25 mbps whenever I'm downloading anything, but I think the difference between what speedtest shows and what I actually get is too drastic for there not to be anything wrong. Is there any way I can get faster speeds?

[ANUPLUCIFERGAMER]

it's nothing to worry about. it's your isp or network. it changes all the time. if you did the test 2nd time,you would have gotten some other results. sometimes your network becomes too fast and sometimes too damn slow. so, nothing to worry about. it's just normal and even i've faced this.

[Stickeric]

From what I have read somewhere (Tryed to find it but can't ), the 8 Mb/s doesn't mean you actually download that.

 

Example I have 50Mb/s and I download on steam with ~5mb/s, It also depends on the steam servers if they aren't busy etc.

I do have find this somewhere:

 

1 Mb is different then 1MB.

8 bits in a byte..50 / 8 = 6.25 MB/sec.to KB/sec6.25 * 1024 = 6400 KB/sec. 1 MB = 1 MegaByte1 Mb = 1 Megabit1 MegaByte = 8 Megabit

That does seems right with my download speed with steam About 5mb/s

[Tomtom565]

With 8.25Mb down, you're looking at around 600-700kbps.

When I had my 8Mb line, I was round 700ish, now on a 18Mb line and I get 2.2MB..

As Stickeric said, there is a difference between Mb (Megabits) and MB (Megabytes)

[LAwLz]

You are getting MBps and Mbps mixed up.

Speedtest measures in megabit, and your applications like Steam measures in megabytes. Each byte is 8 bits, so in order to convert between the two measurements you divide or multiple by 8.

 

Your download speed is 8250Kbps. Divide that by 8 to get your KBps speed, which would be ~1000KBps. In a absolute best case scenario, with nobody else using your connection, and you only use it to download 1 single thing from a very fast server, you can get ~1000KBps (aka 1MBps) with that connection.

[Darren]

A speedtest is how much throughput you can sustain between you and that particular server which is usually a good indication of much bandwidth your ISP can throw at your connection. When you do something like torrent, it depends on much more than just a single server on the other end. Just because you have a 8mbit connection doesn't necessarily mean everything ever will download at 8mbit.

[urworstnit3m3r]

Like a few have said it also depends on the servers your connecting too, i have noticed with my connection speed that many places can not even upload at that speed.

[Guest Kefuren]

Like a few have said it also depends on the servers your connecting too, i have noticed with my connection speed that many places can not even upload at that speed.

Yes, but as already said above, speedtest.net indicates the speed as megabits per second (Mb/s), the same that your ISP most likely uses, like "100/5 high-speed cable", and usually download and upload speed in applications are indicated as megabytes per second (MB/s), which in the absolute optimal scenario would be Mb/s divided by 8 (MB/s = Mb/s / 8  and  Mb/s = MB/s * 8), so your upload would be around 0.62 MB/s and download around 12,045 MB/s.

 

Of course you will get actually that "maximum" speed very rarely, if ever, because there are just so many factors outside the conversion formula affecting the speeds; for example the distance between you and the server, the quality of the server, the capacity and speed of the server and so forth.

 

I myself have a 100/5 cable connection, and I get speeds of ~95 Mb/s down and 4.85 Mb/s up, but if I download something from, let's say Steam, I usually have a throughput of 11.5 MB/s, so that would be 92 Mb/s.

[Talsyrius]

I wouldn't trust the speed test if you have above 80mbit connection, as it depends a lot on the receiving side of the service how much it shows. 

[LAwLz]

-snip-

I myself have a 100/5 cable connection, and I get speeds of ~95 Mb/s down and 4.85 Mb/s up, but if I download something from, let's say Steam, I usually have a throughput of 11.5 MB/s, so that would be 92 Mb/s.

You also have to remember that there is some overhead with different protocols. For example you won't reach the same speeds using TCP as you would using UDP.