What's causing strange speedtest.net behavior?

G

gmreplay

Weaksauce
Joined
Dec 27, 2010
Messages
92
I'm getting really odd results from www.speedtest.net in the past couple of weeks. The AT&T tech replaced my ethernet socket, cable, and modem a couple of weeks ago, and my router settings were reset in the process. Since then when running the test on my mac laptop I'm getting these results with very few data points, often reporting zero mbps or 40 mbps for subsequent points, but ending up around an average of 10mbps.

Strangely, I'm not getting these herky jerky results on my iphone when running the speed test app. It displays what it should - a large number of data points falling within a fairly narrow range of speeds. Though I am also reporting abnormally slow speeds on the iOS app (around 7mbps).

I should be getting about 12mbps on each device, which is what I get on my ethernet connected PC. I've chosen the least busy wifi channel (1), but this doesn't seem to have alleviated the problem.

Link to screenshot of mac laptop results: http://imgur.com/5L8Ujra

Link to screenshot of iphone app results: http://imgur.com/AEGvKI3
 
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Generally if you have 2 devices connected to the same router and one works and one doesnt then blake the device that doesn't work. Especially because the rg att gives you is not dual band wifi.
 
If you have uverse tv or voip service, at&t sets QoS as voip(voice), video, internet in that order. If you have internet only, try a speedtest hardwired vs wireless. See what the results end up being.
 
I've got internet only. The flakiness is showing up most on the mac, but I've experienced significant speed issues on two iphones as well. They are not, however, showing the weird low-data-point issue that I'm seeing on the Mac.

The problem does seem to be entirely on wireless devices. However, I'm not seeing anything in the settings that would justify the problem, and the issue has only come up since the tech was here a couple of weeks ago.
 
Try a different channel (I see you mention you tried 1). The auto mode on the 589 isn't that auto lol (I presume this is what he placed, as it's our newest rg)

Odd spikes in the "data point" graph aside, between 10-12 is normal depending on the profile they have you set on. PM me if you would like me to look into it more on the account side.

Been with AT&T for 5 years.
 
It was initially at channel 11, which was heavily populated with other signals. Channels 1 and 6 are about equal (each has 2-3 signals).

I'm not displeased with the overall speed, particularly on my ethernet cable connected machine, but the service feels really inconsistent, and that seems to be reflected in the graph as well. Like I'm just spinning my wheels for 4-5 seconds on some pages, followed by the page loading normally. I wonder whether I'm experiencing interference, packet loss, or maybe some other issues.
 
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