6 replies

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nybiker

@Triterion:

Not so good as compared to others:

[www.pingtest.net]

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admiral_stabbin

@Triterion: I had identical results to yours. You win though...first post. :-)

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MostlyHarmless

@admiral_stabbin: 10 ms ping and 1ms jitter. You Lose.

To a bespectacled penguin. That must be a new low for you.

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Taed

@Triterion: I got 4 ms ping and 0 ms jitter. I ran it again and got 5 ms ping and 1 ms jitter. I'm on a T-1.

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bhr

@Taed: T1 is slow as balls. Im surprised.

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Taed

@bhr: Balls can be quite fast and deadly. Think kinetic kill weapons. Ouch!

Remember that there's speed and then there's bandwidth. You may have higher potential download bandwidth than my T-1, but I have dedicated 1 Mbps bandwidth in both directions and speed commitments and such from our provider.

In reality, I was probably just lucky in that my T-1 terminates in the same location as my \"closest ping server\" or some other similar explanation.

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Ragman

@Taed: Happy Fun Ball? [en.wikipedia.org]

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Pandare

@Ragman: Well, if that's the case, then he definitely should not be taunting it.

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katstermonster

@Taed: That's impressive. I'm on T3.

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veronykah

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katstermonster

@Triterion: 8 ms ping, 0 ms jitter.

BOOSH!

2 replies

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MostlyHarmless

@katstermonster: You suck.

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katstermonster

@MostlyHarmless: Quite on the contrary, sir. It would appear that I won.

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Rachacha

@katstermonster: I think you and I tied 8ms ping 0ms jitter...I LOVE FiOS!

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MostlyHarmless

@katstermonster: Your suckage is unrelated to your winnage.

[en.wikipedia.org]

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katstermonster

@MostlyHarmless: We shall not speak of the Yankees, kind sir.

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reuvenb

Don't forget Speedtest.net as well. I think it's also done by Ookla.

4 replies

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Coles_Law

@reuvenb: Yep-they even link to it on pingtest.

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j-o-h-n

@reuvenb: 70 Meg Up, 31 Meg down!

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xredgambit

@j-o-h-n: I just want one Meg ;) But I use road runner with the turbo boost. I obtained 175 megs of data in about 10 mins this morning. It made me happy that it is fast.

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proskills

@j-o-h-n: Dual T3 lines?

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j-o-h-n

@proskills: Actually, we own our own 10GB fiber :)
I'm sure the bottleneck is my MacBook's own 100Mb NIC.

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PsiCop

@j-o-h-n: Just did the math. Using kbps as a \"baseline\" unit, 10Gb/s is just over 10,000,000 kbps, and 100Mb/s is just over 100,000. So yeah, your ethernet is the bottleneck. In fact, I suspect your fiber is faster than the bus speed of your MacBook, which means there's nothing you could never maximize your Internet connection ... not without having multiple systems in your own all drawing on it at once (and then, you'd need one serious ethernet switch to handle all that).

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j-o-h-n

@PsiCop: Well, it's certainly the bottleneck between my computer and where we connect to the \"commodity internet\", but after that, there may, of course, be other slower places between me and any given destination.

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PsiCop

@PsiCop: \"nothing you could never maximize\" S/B \"nothing you could ever do to maximize.\" Aaaarrrghh!

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DangerMouth

Ok, this is why it's a bad idea to jump on every stupid thing that gets posted. I got an A rating, but had to unblock my firewall for the packet test.

How to I get it up again?

(feeling very stupid right now)

2 replies

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P=mv

@DangerMouth: Didn't you do the \"temp permission\" thing? Now I'll have to check mine and make sure its still working how I want it to.

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DangerMouth

@AshCatScram: The firefox box popped up and gave me a choice of 'unblock' or 'keep blocking', I don't know if it was refering to just that page or connection. I'm poking around now..

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XTC46

@DangerMouth: If it was a firefox pop up, it wasnt your firewall, it was likely an addon needing to be run, or a script needing to be executed.

If its your firewall, go to start -> control pannels -> windows security center -> firewall and make sure that is turned on.

If you are using a 3rd party firewall open the application and verify it is on.

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DangerMouth

@xtc46 - thinksmarter on twitter: Thanks, I checked, whatever it was, my actual firewall is firmly in place, Crisis averted, lol.

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Colonel Jack O'Neill

All of these kinds of test are garbage. With this they choosing the closet server to you, and the closer the server is to you, the better it's gonna be. In order to get real results, you should pick the server that is the farthest away from you that you can.

1 replies

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XTC46

@Colonel Jack O'Neill: It depends on what you are trying to meassure.

If you are measuring bandwidth, you need to go to your ISP's CO, as that is where your bandwidth is available to, once there, you have no guarantees, and in reality unless you are using an SLA connection (most residental and even most business connections are non-SLA), you arent guaranteed any bandwith at all.

If you are testing LATENCY you pick the server closest to your target...or just run a ping to it from the command line.

Distance is relevant. Proper routing protocol and network congestion are much much larger factors than distance. And these tests dont work on that.

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Fujikopez

This stupid thing crashed my browser. Grr.

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CompyPaq

I tested it from my University. I got an 'F'. I guess that's why Hulu doesn't really work.

4 replies

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pecan 3.14159265

@CompyPaq: I have a B at home and Hulu doesn't stream continuously. I have to stop it to let it buffer. You being at a university means there are thousands of people online at any given moment. It makes sense why Hulu may not work nearly as well as say, 5 am when the majority of students are likely to be asleep.

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rickhamilton620

@CompyPaq: I got a D, Uni internet sucks in general. Can barely watch standard YouTube vids...irritating..

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Wireless Joe

@CompyPaq: Ah, takes me back to the days of playing Quake CTF online from the dorms at Washington State university. Always had less than a 10ms ping, while a lot of people were still on dialup. My handle was LPB.

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katstermonster

@CompyPaq: Where do you go??? I got an A at my university.

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pittstonjoma

I got an A.

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mwshook

Crashes Firefox. LOL. Crashed it 3 times in a row. Does that mean I get an F?

3 replies

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catastrophegirl chooses not to fly

@mwshook: same here, crashed multiple times

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ShadowFalls

@catastrophegirl:

Works fine here, multiple times. These tests are flash based, Probably need to update your Adobe Flash more often.

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PunditGuy

@mwshook: Incomplete.

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golddog

If I was going to go to the trouble of creating a website like this, I'd make sure it worked the same across browsers.

Firefox reports 99% packet loss yet my connection speed and ping time are what they are supposed to be (which would be impossible with 99% packet loss). In IE it reports it can't even test packet loss. I didn't care enough to look at my logs but they must be trying to use a funky port/protocol.

Although to their credit, they do take a page from Google and say \"Beta\". Ping me back when you get out of Beta.

2 replies

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AnthonyC

@golddog:
I use firefox, too (in XP). The website is just fine for me.

It did ask me to allow the site to do something Java-related. Do you have Java on your computer?

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yellowlight

@golddog: I remember it gave me some trouble until I turned off my firewall. Also make sure you use a server close to you.

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Hoss

The Consumerist, a not for profit site often makes positive mention of for profit web sites without third party attribution but doesnt on the other hand promote non-web consumer products (as would be expected, they should not). The subtlety is confusing.

1 replies

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pecan 3.14159265

@Hoss: How is it confusing? Consumerist is not promoting a for-profit website in order to gain monetarily. In fact, it's not even promoting Pingtest, it's merely stating that its results could help consumers get a better deal. There's no reason to suspect that just because Pingtest could be a for profit website that its product is unreliable. WebMD is a business, but no one doubts the validity of its ability to communicate medical facts to consumers.

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NightSteel

My big question is, do ISPs prioritize traffic to known connection testing sites? My home connection has been crappy for weeks, until I go to do a speed test, then it's frickin' awesome.

2 replies

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Rectilinear Propagation

@NightSteel: AT&T doesn't seem to bother with that. I fully expect to get a low letter grade when I test my connection at home.

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baquwards

@NightSteel: same here. I can't even watch youtube videos but when I do a speed test it is like 10 mbps on a 7mbps connection. I feel that I may be being throttled, I hate time warner cable!

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subtlefrog

For some reason, I looked at the picture and thought, well, that's good, none of Ben's packets were lost.

And that struck me as funnier than it should have.

1 replies

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cookmefud

@subtlefrog: and I looked at it and thought \"ewwwww....earthlink.\"

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Telekinesis123

Bah SHAW Cable! I got a D and I have their \"Extreme\" internet package. >.<

1 replies

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Telekinesis123

@Telekinesis123: Omg my speed is 2 mbits per second! I'm like 5X as slow as the ISP average and as I mentioned before I pay extra for their \"high speed extreme\" service, more like extreme ripoff!

Man way back in the day Here in Calgary we were one of the first in NA with cable internet but there is no competition here and SHAW does not upgrade their network. Guess what their advertising slogan is lately? \"Now 50% faster!\" 50% faster than zero is still zero =(

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the lesser of two weevils

I dont know how I got an A. This is the slowest \"high speed\" connection I've ever had (Time Warner). Also confusing is that I thought I had RoadRunner but apparently my isp is Earthlink.

1 replies

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Rachacha

@the lesser of two weevils: Remember, this is only looking at the delay time from when your computer asks the server something, and when the server responds. It has nothing to with the actual download speed (unless you are experiencing severe ping delay in which case you will notice a delay because the servers take a long time to respond to you).

To check your download and upload speeds, check [speedtest.net]

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ElPresidente408

All this is looking at is how your connection performs in theory. You're better off starting a download and run \"netstat -s\".

Compare the \"Segments Sent / Segments Retransmitted\" numbers. That's a better indication of packet loss.

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JackieEggs

Packet loss = 0, Pinged in at 32ms (is that good or bad?), Jitter = 1 ms...

Color me confuzzled.

1 replies

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proskills

@JackieEggs: When it comes to ping, that is the total time it takes your packet to travel from your computer, to their server, and receive a different packet back. Anything under 60 ms is considered fine, anything under 20 ms is considered excellent.

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happyandblue2

I scored a B on the crappiest connection ever known to humankind..

1 replies

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ShadowFalls

@happyandblue2:

So you got Comcast?

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squishyalt

BEWARE! It also crashes Firefox 3.5.5!

2 replies

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ShadowFalls

@squishyalt:

Doesn't crash mine.

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squishyalt

@ShadowFalls: It was probably because I didn't have Java installed. IMHO, Java is crapware and a potential liability to any system that runs it.

Perhaps the developer should make the app NOT run if Java is not installed - instead of crashing the browser with no info as to why.

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TheMonkeyKing

I stick with DSL reports because it measures my connection and then compares the same type by locality, giving me an understanding just how badly Verizon mauls me every month.

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Rectilinear Propagation

Wow, that's awesome.

November 23, 2009 5:31 PM

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circumpunct

Ping time is pretty irrelevant. It's a measure of latency, not throughput. High bandwidth satellite systems have HUGE ping times as the signal goes way out into space and back again to get to the server, then repeats the trip coming back. But they are massively faster than many terrestrial technologies with short ping times.