3G data speed testing - XT on iPad vs iPhone 4 on Vodafone

**Zimsar10** · 9th August 2010, 17:08

Originally Posted by jonbuoy

For sure, they should give out the guaranteed minimum bit rates not just a peak or "burstable" bit rate.

No provider in New Zealand "guarantee's minimum data throughput" for Residential Internet or Mobile Data internet. There are just too many variables to factor in.

Business plans (for landline internet) are a different kettle of fish altogether, but that's not what we are talking about here.

**jonbuoy** · 9th August 2010, 18:09

Originally Posted by Zimsar10

Huh?? There is nothing wrong with using www.speedtest.net to determine the Mobile Speed in a given area (or landline speeds for that matter), it is accurate & I'm not aware of any NZ company deliberately slowing Mobile Data Speeds down....I'm happy to look at some evidence if you can prove it though.

You need to remember, that when more customers are using a cell site for Data, the speeds will decrease (by how much depends on backhaul to the cell site) & also the coverage area will decrease (cell site breathing).

My tests were done at a busy time of day as well, to provide a more "real world" indication of the speeds, at the time of testing.

You may also be interested in some Speed Tests that a person I know of completed in Dunedin, they were more comprehensive, in terms of measuring data throughput than mine & they certainly did not show any indication of speed shaping/throttling on either network.

View the tests here & check out the video to see actual download speeds:

http://buttonmasher.co.nz/ahmad/2010...t-vs-vodafone/

There is - google it, internet providors have cottoned on to the fact a lot of people use speedtest.net for checking their broadband, its easy to fool it by bursting the data rate for the few seconds that speedtest and the relativley small file it downloads. Thats why proper testing should be done with a larger file over a longer period. But you´ve already made up your mind so I´ll leave you to it.

http://superuser.com/questions/30107...dem-speed-test

**jonbuoy** · 9th August 2010, 18:17

Originally Posted by Zimsar10

No provider in New Zealand "guarantee's minimum data throughput" for Residential Internet or Mobile Data internet. There are just too many variables to factor in.

Business plans (for landline internet) are a different kettle of fish altogether, but that's not what we are talking about here.

Thats the problem, a lot of people pay a fair amount of cash to go on "higher" data rate plans which they probably wouldn´t need if the ISP´s gave them what they were sold in the first place, even if they garanteed the base rate at a lower rate and sold the plans with a seperate peak and a garaunteed lower rate, even if the lower rate was quite low ie .25MB it would give a fairer comparisson between the providors.

**Zimsar10** · 9th August 2010, 18:45

Originally Posted by jonbuoy

There is - google it, internet providors have cottoned on to the fact a lot of people use speedtest.net for checking their broadband, its easy to fool it by bursting the data rate for the few seconds that speedtest and the relativley small file it downloads. Thats why proper testing should be done with a larger file over a longer period. But you´ve already made up your mind so I´ll leave you to it.

http://superuser.com/questions/30107...dem-speed-test

No - if you read my blog - I stated:

Whilst I appreciate that downloading a 20MB file provides more accurate data throughput information for HSDPA Networks, this was not possible to do on the day of the testing.

The Speedtests are still accurate & they give an good indication of throughput on the network. This is backed up by a comment from Enternet Online, in the comments section of my blog, from an email I received from them, here is that email - note their comment in the last paragraph:

Hi Grant,

Mark has asked me to respond to you with information about EOL’s network, and in particular speedtest.net and the comments on your blogg from Anonerd.

The only thing this person got right is yes we are a small company.

However, our bandwidth to the outside world until recently provided us with an excess of 100Mbps over and above our maximum use, this has now been increased to over 1Gbps. The reason we need such a high amount of spare bandwidth is because of our specialised customer base which is predominantly business, Government and Corporate to whom we have to allocate a guaranteed speed even though they never use it. Hence we have more spare bandwidth available than most other ISP’s. You can easily see this by running speedtests to all the NZ speedtest.net sites from a nice fast connection and you will see that EOL is usually the fastest.

In addition EOL has this bandwidth spread over more than one upstream circuit, and to more than one upstream provider. OOKLA the owners of speedtest.net chose EOL as their only NZ beta test site for 3 months before launching it because we where the fastest and most reliable of all their NZ mirrors.

Small does not always mean slow or inferior, so I would say that your 3G tests are accurate and we are grateful that you chose our server to perform them on.

Kind Regards,
Terry Coles

–
‘As Fast As You Want To Go’
EOL Wireless Broadband
http://www.eol.co.nz
Tel: +64 7 5770066
Fax: +64 7 9286063

Furthermore, did you look at this link? http://buttonmasher.co.nz/ahmad/2010...t-vs-vodafone/ < this link shows real time download speeds of a 31.08MB file & speeds go up to 200-300Kb/s and higher - there is no speed capping evident there.

**Zimsar10** · 9th August 2010, 18:49

Originally Posted by jonbuoy

Thats the problem, a lot of people pay a fair amount of cash to go on "higher" data rate plans which they probably wouldn´t need if the ISP´s gave them what they were sold in the first place, even if they garanteed the base rate at a lower rate and sold the plans with a seperate peak and a garaunteed lower rate, even if the lower rate was quite low ie .25MB it would give a fairer comparisson between the providors.

I agree - this would be nice - but at this time, it doesn't happen & IMHO it's unlikely to in the near future. If a New Zealand provider ever offers "dedicated speed plans" they will be at a premium price unfortunately.

**Brian d marge** · 9th August 2010, 19:49

I cant talk about NZ

I sure as hell can see the data rate being throttled , I emailed one guy ( set up a torrent of large size ) he was seeding at 500 KBps I received at 450 ,430 or something
like that
after a few seconds it clearly dropped to 230 Kbps

All of my large file drop to the same amount

Also when there is few people on line ie 10 am Monday morning , my speeds have been as high as 650 Kbps

had the engineers arrive the line is ok, Soooooo its the provider

and I am due to ring them up today , and it will be the usual run around.

I dont mind getting 230KBps ( of course I want one gig ) but if I was told thats yer lot , then fine

dont tell me 100 Mbps ( here is your rolls royce sir, once your money has been deposited inmy swiss bank account , you may look at your car once every Summer equinox , depending on availability )

lying cheating toe rags

Stephen

ps and I use Linux so the usual excuse is , Oh you are not using windows , well that might be the problem

**Gremlin** · 9th August 2010, 20:09

Stephen, its quite possible that if you're speaking to the normal tier 1 support, they have no clue as to the back end operations, how it works etc.

However, I don't fancy your chances of getting to speak to the ones who actually run the systems...

**jonbuoy** · 9th August 2010, 20:42

OK no point in wasting my time arguing on the internet, all I will say is check out WGET if you want to do some larger file testing. All most of us are saying is that Speedtest.net is a rough and ready way to test download speeds for a few seconds. For serious and "comprehensive" testing a few zaps on speedtest doesn´t give the full picture.

**Brian d marge** · 9th August 2010, 23:03

Ok
this thread got me off my arse

I knew I was being throttled , but all I got was denial from customer support

so I rang today ( just got off phone) and after a bit of bullshit on his part , he finally admitted that trasmission software ( linux) was on the hit list and he said throttled at 80 percent

Now I don't know how they can detect what software , the port number sure ( mine was random) but ,,,,,,

anyway these are the numbers

provider speed test said 89mbps down
shaper detector software said 85Mbps down
downloading using transmission ( random file ) 2.7Mbps best

so I was being throttled by 96%

Btw the measured available bandwidth was over 221 Mbps ( according to software)

and they all do it apparently ( as far as I can tell )

Stephen

**Bald Eagle** · 9th August 2010, 23:24

The nasty word in all this is contention. All the ISP's without exception oversell based on user connections per circuit. They figure we just dumb users and can suck it up.

The bottom line is they don't care, they've got a license to print money. They own the pipe and charge for the water as well.

**Brian d marge** · 10th August 2010, 00:28

The cue for my tired saggy old arse ( the governments and Corporations that rape it repeatedly ) is:

The Tax man

The bank

The Government ( in all is shapeless underhanded taxes)

Telcos ( private)

The Utilities ( private, water electricity and Health )

Education ( now that's a running con)

The wife's credit card

My liver

and the mangy old dog my mother in law owns

Please feel free to add to the list , My poor tired arse has been abused more times than a .................

Stephen