Computor Shopper Competion, Rate your ISP

[#1]

Computer shopping are currently running a survey of ISP and the speed and service you get, they are giving a Mesh Laptop Computer away as a price  to enter

[#2]

With respect to Mesh it would appear that they are no longer using Repairline for warranty work after a major and public bust up
http://www.repairlineltd.com/
http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-channel/135656-headlines-mesh-computers-placed-stop-outsourced-site-su...

[#3]

That`s the first thing I thought of when I saw Pierres post..... yours was hidden below, Jim !

[#4]

I've just got a very impressive speedtest.net result!

[#5]

Eh!.... is that anything to do with the Computer shopper best ISP survey ?....    Don`t remember anything about having the best speed result to be able to take part in the survey..... ! 

[#6]

It asks you for your speed and gives a link to speedtest.net.

[#7]

Oh! Now I see why you posted that "exhorbitantly" high speed test.... just showing off ! !
Actually did one or two on there to check my speed against plusnet..... Maidenhead & London gave me about the same speed (download) 957/965 but when I went via Roubaix in France, I got 1090 as my download speed.....(almost twice as far in mileage ! !)

[#8]

Quote from: shutter

Oh! Now I see why you posted that "exhorbitantly" high speed test.... just showing off ! !

No, not showing off, just demonstrating that you can't believe everything a speed tester says. That results is significantly faster than the maximum actually possible!
The Belgium and Netherlands sites often give good results - perhaps they are not so heavily used as the British sites.

[#9]

My speed was about 10 kps higher from Belgium than from London...................

[#10]

I see you are trying to do down PlusNet Jelv, by Doing a BT Rin test?
any way what faith can you have in a system that just gave these result?

4/12/2008 5:36 PM GMT 87.112.38.89 4345 kb/s 377 kb/s  52 ms Sittingbourne ~ 200 mi Close
4/12/2008 5:35 PM GMT 87.112.38.89 3739 k/s  377 kb/s  93 ms Oslo ~ 600 mi Open
4/12/2008 5:34 PM GMT 87.112.38.89 1366 kb/s 319 kb/s 141 ms Cairo  ~ 2350 mi Open
4/12/2008 5:33 PM GMT 87.112.38.89 3746 kb/s 378 kb/s  72 ms Maidenhead ~ 150 mi Open
This morning, just before I started the thread I got a speed of 6800, my fastest yet  ever?
What are they testing? not your connection surely

[#11]

They test how long it takes to download a file from their server to yours.
From that, you can extrapolate the download speed.
However, since there are so many links and other variables along the way, you are unlikely to get completely consistent results.
Also remember that the server hosting the tester will have a finite upload capactity - after a point the limiting factor in a a speedtest would be the speed that the file can be served to you at, rather than the speed that you *could* receive the file at. (if that makes sense?)

[#12]

It does to me but what about all the other people who are filling in the survey and rubbishing their ISP?

[#13]

Its another reason never to rely on a single survey - each one will be somehow skewed, either because of the people they ask, or because of what they ask.
The best thing to do is take them all with a pinch of salt, but use them all to build up a kind of trend of the performance of different ISPs.
If a couple of ISPs are consistently in the top 3 for example, you'd know they were all pretty good.
(Which is how I selected PN all those years ago - they were 1st 2nd or 3rd in almost every category - the ones who beat them for some categories rarely rated highly in the other ones.)