Can ISPs 'cheat' speedtest.net?

[Pada]

XTM:
Do yourself a favour and find out what your ADSL stats are (line attenuation, SNR/noise margin, line speed - both for upstream & downstream) and post them here. Also tell us what brand & model ADSL modem you have.

Secondly, do a trace route to like www.google.co.za and post the results here too.
To do a trace route, open up Command Prompt and run: tracert www.google.co.za
You can right-click, mark and select all the text, right-click again and paste it in your post.

[XTM]

Tracing route to www.facebook.com [69.63.189.74]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 10.0.0.2
2 47 ms 48 ms 48 ms dsl-146-56-01.telkomadsl.co.za [41.146.56.1]
3 48 ms 46 ms 42 ms tpr-ip-cat-1-vlan-913.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.43
.33.238]
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 51 ms 47 ms 46 ms 196.43.10.130
7 38 ms 37 ms 37 ms rrba-ip-lir-1-gig-2-0-0-201.telkom-ipnet.co.za [
196.43.33.5]
8 243 ms 235 ms 231 ms fra-ip-hsll-1-gig-0-1-0.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.
43.9.102]
9 250 ms 247 ms 248 ms s5-0-0-16.ipa4.lon1.bbnplanet.net [195.16.162.12
9]
10 283 ms 277 ms 271 ms vlan70.csw2.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.154.126]

11 256 ms 258 ms 245 ms ae-71-71.ebr1.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.140.5]

12 290 ms 293 ms 293 ms ae-48-48.ebr2.Paris1.Level3.net [4.69.143.146]
13 378 ms 382 ms 393 ms ae-42-42.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.137.5
4]
14 * 422 ms 410 ms ae-62-62.csw1.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.134.1
46]
15 411 ms 421 ms 420 ms ae-1-60.edge3.Washington4.Level3.net [4.69.149.1
8]
16 340 ms 534 ms 316 ms FACEBOOK-IN.edge3.Washington4.Level3.net [4.53.1
16.6]
17 354 ms 348 ms 345 ms ae1.bb01.iad2.tfbnw.net [204.15.20.54]
18 333 ms 323 ms 335 ms ae1.dr02.ash2.tfbnw.net [74.119.76.79]
19 344 ms 354 ms 347 ms po1014.csw01a.ash2.tfbnw.net [74.119.76.129]
20 339 ms 355 ms 342 ms www-slb-11-01-ash2.facebook.com [69.63.189.74]

Trace complete.


i already posted my stats in other thread so here is again
ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 384 kbps 128 kbps
Line Attenuation 36.5 db 22.5 db
Noise Margin 35.0 db 14 db
netgear telkom modem

[Zewp]

Okay, here's something odd with Speedtest. I've ran it multiple times today, testing my international speeds. Every time when it comes to testing upload speeds it doesn't go over 20kb/s upload, yet in the results it shows almost 40kb/s upload speeds.

How does this work?