Article suggestion: speed test sites and other tools to measure bandwidth

[Xentrk]

The various speed test sites give me different results. It makes me wonder why and which one I should believe. These include speedtest.net, dslreports.com, testmy.net, etc..there are also tools on entware. My iPad has an app called net analyzer which gives me more favorable results than the websites. Dslreports also gives me much more faborable results when compared to the ones I mentioned previously. Most of my testing is over an OpenVPN tunnel. How does that impact the results? Would be an interesting article.

 

[Nullity]

Especially for reasonably precise network testing, I've found that the most accurate way to test download speed is to just start a normal download from some respectable sites (I like kernel.org) and observe the speeds over a longer timespan than most speedtests. Speedtests generally seem to be too quick for any real accuracy beyond confirming that there's a big problem or not.

Netflix's fast.com seems pretty good for quick test though.

 

[System Error Message]

speed test is actually reliable but many ISPs host their own so you dont get a proper test, only a test of your line between you and your ISP.
dslreports however isnt hosted by ISPs, the test cant be faked and while all the tests are browser based it is a very good test.

If you have a server in a datacenter (like renting/hosted/renting virtual server) than you can run things like iperf between you and that server.

A lot of these tests use their own protocols though.