ookla speedtest app being throttled by windows

#OOKLA SPEEDTEST APP BEING THROTTLED BY WINDOWS DOWNLOAD#

The signal travels at the speed of light in the medium it's traveling in. (If you're near DC, and there's a high speed link from the DC area to Los Angeles, the fastest server may actually be in California. It may not be the closest one geographically. What's 'best'? The one it takes packets the shortest time to get to and back to you from.

#OOKLA SPEEDTEST APP BEING THROTTLED BY WINDOWS DOWNLOAD#

So how does this make both the 1.6mbps download and the 20mbps speed test 'right'? Watch the Ookla speedtest app when it first starts doing the test. If it's only 4 routers it's going to be much faster.Īnd if the path the packet takes is congested, with lots of traffic (like the link from Microsoft to the internet on 'Patch Tuesday'), the traffic over that portion of the trip to you is going to be slow - and the download goes as fast as the slowest portion of the trip or slower (as fast if there's only one router, slower if there are more).

If the route the packet takes includes 25 routers, it's going to be slow. Just as stopping for a meal takes time, routing a packet takes time (less than the time it takes you to swallow once, but still time).

(It then has ways of determining which device on your wifi the packet goes to and 'routes' it to that device.) Your router sees it and grabs it because it's addressed to your external IP address. All devices connected to that pipe see the packet but they ignore it because it's not addressed to them. Their router decides which cable or fiber the packet goes down. That goes from router to router until it gets to your provider. The closest router (usually their provider) looks for the 'to' address in the packet, then sends ('routes') it down the right 'pipe' to get it to a router closer to you. The server you're downloading from spits out a packet of data addressed to you. The internet also has 'rest stops' and 'gas stations' - they're called routers. You also won't average 60mph on a 3,000 mile trip (unless you can stay awake and alert for a few days without eating or needing a bathroom). (If it takes an hour to get from the 'Exit 1 Mile Ahead' sign to the exit, you went 1mph.) So is the maximum speed you can get up to with that car 1mph or 90mph? You've measured them both. While you might be able to do more than 100mph (if you don't get caught) on a good highway, you won't be doing it during the rush hour - in the same car on the same roadway. There's a roadway (a wire or fiber optic 'pipe') and it can 'clog up' with 'rush hour' 'traffic' (signals going down a network are actually called traffic) the same as a vehicle roadway can. (Or, if you're in certain cities, it slows to moving a few inches every minute or so.) The same thing happens on the Information Superhighway - the internet. If you have too much traffic for the number of lanes, traffic slows to a crawl. The Information Superhighway has something in common with real highways. They have no control of the speed from the server to them, but your download will be at the speed of the slowest point in the path from the server to your computer. Speed tests are used to measure the speed from your provider to you. So you can have a 20mbps speed test and a 2mbps download and they're both correct. The speed between server A and your computer now isn't going to be what it was an hour ago. The speed between server A and your computer isn't going to be the same as the speed between server B and your computer. Speed on the internet isn't absolute speed, it's speed between 2 points - in this case between a server and your computer. So is Ookla lying? Is your browser lying?

You run the Ookla speedtest app and you get 20mbps down, 2mbps up (which, BTW, is normal - upload speed is normally about 10% of the download speed) then, when you download a file you get 1.6mbps.

Ookla speedtest app being throttled by windows