How accurate is speedtest ping

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boerseun

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On speedtest.net my ping is consistently above 500 ms, however, when I ping mybroadband, it's between 30 and 40 ms adsl.telkomsa.net replies are between 30 and 40 ms. pinging www.webafrica.co.za responses are between 20 and 30 ms. My ADSL account is with mweb.

So I suspect the pings reported by speedtest.net are not very reliable.
 
There are claims that ISP's cache it so it's best to try a variety of test, speedtest.net being one of them. Try FTP, torrents, streaming, usenet etc.

I also like http://speedof.me.
 
boerseun said:
On speedtest.net my ping is consistently above 500 ms, however, when I ping mybroadband, it's between 30 and 40 ms adsl.telkomsa.net replies are between 30 and 40 ms. pinging www.webafrica.co.za responses are between 20 and 30 ms. My ADSL account is with mweb.

So I suspect the pings reported by speedtest.net are not very reliable.
Click to expand...

Good Morning boerseun, you could also use the saix.net and mweb speed tests as comparatives.

http://www.mweb.co.za/helpcentre/MWEBSpeedTest.aspx and http://capetown.spdtst.saix.net/
 
A lot of factors can influence the latency reading but it is generally quite accurate, for me at least. You still have not said which servers you are using however, this is the most critical information to know.
 
speedtest.net's ping isn't accurate at all! With my PC it is telling me I have like 230ms ping to the local MWEB server, when it is in fact only around 20ms.
I have to say that at least the speedtest.net's ping can give you some indication as to the state that your connection is in. Like it showed the latency was 1300ms when my avg latency was between 500ms - 1500ms.

traceroute / ping should be used from the command-line instead. A TCP ping is perhaps not a bad idea if your ISP account is being shaped.
 
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