Some of the ISPs over provision the circuits to avoid issues with customers running speed tests and getting a lower speed than they are paying for. I’m paying for 500mb internet but actually get close to 600.
Source I worked for an ISP.
this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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ISPs typically provision their modems to provide a little more speed than what is actually listed. Not always true. When I worked at spectrum, 200mbps connections would show over 200 when I ran tests. Selecting different servers would yield wildly different results.
Use a more reliable speed test site. The correct answer is you can’t, after some overhead a gigabit port caps out around 940mbps. Anything being reported over that is a bad measurement or a bug.
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use google speed test. fast.com is trash
use ookla
do nperf speedtest
Most speed tests are predictions.
The amount of times I see the word over-provisioned here is comical. Literally not related to what he is seeing. HIS ROUTER HAS A 1GIG WAN INTERFACE, it cannot and will not run at 1.2gbps lol.
It's because he is full of shit and has a 2.5gig nic in the modem and tried 30 times to get it to read 1.2 cause it almost is 1.1ish max. On a gig card you can't even see a constant 980mbit, forget about higher.
Fast website is full of shit and does not show speeds accurately.
Use iperf3 and connect to a server close to you to get a real measurement
I have FiOS and mine reads faster than the speed I pay for by about 100mbps both ways. The tech said they deliberately over-provision so that you'll get at least the advertised speed on wireless. I'm not sure who your provider is so this may not apply to you.
it's the fact that he has a 1 gig router. with overhead only like 940 Mbps is possible
His router is rated for 1 gig, meaning it'll do minimum that amount.
It's not like they're going to set a software rate limit to make sure he doesn't go over that amount in ideal circumstances.
Unless he owns a Cisco router and hasn't purchased a performance license.
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That can’t be right because I’ve seen higher speeds than that during downloads with a download manager on my 1GBs infrastructure https://imgur.com/a/aIaVpi8
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Are you complaining or bragging? :-)
J/K man. I see others have answered your inquiry.
Bits, bytes, rounding, bad math, and maybe compression
Fast, while loading quicker than speedtest, can hitch occasionally and give you a higher speed than you're actually getting. It might read 800mb/s one moment, then realize it was supposed to be 1gb/s, and then compensate by giving false numbers. That number approximated your gig service, you're fine.
It could be AT&T. They overprovision the circuits. A 1Gbps on Xpon will test 1300.
If the router has 1 gbps ethernet port, the max it will provide is about 940mbps. It's the PHY limit of a 1gbps NIC.
Fast is less accurate than Speedtest
I'm able to reproduce if you switch to another browser tab as soon as the test starts.
Some testing software in my experience can give you a higher speed than what you are getting and vice/versa.
For example the Xbox internal test in settings can give me a speed of +600mbps whereas a Google test on a wired connection can give me 300mbps on a 550mbps connection
Additionally, some ISP's may over provision by whatever % to cover overhead and other things.
That is correct. E.g. a 500 Mbps subscription is configured as e.g. 540 Mbps, so that overhead will not impact a speedtest.
But with a 1Gbps connection, setting 1.1Gbps might not be possible as the modems/routers can have a 1Gbps port, so there is a "hard limit" on 1 Gbps. Because of overhead, you will typically only get around 950 Mbps on a 1 Gbps connection.
As for Fast, I have seen the same thing as OP. I can get 1.1Gbps on a 1Gbps connection that normally is "limited" to 950-isj Mbps on other speedtests. The modem internally supports more than 1 Gbps, but is limited by the Ethernet-port.
Try speedtest.cloudflare.com
From my testing specifically from fast.com, every now and then when I run the test run and it glitches a bit, I will see the stated speed slow down and then spikes up, my theory is its using a rolling average, while the spike didnt register some data downloaded it later registers is and gives you a higher than normal average.
Most ISPs deliver a bit more than they promise. Virgin Media's 1G service always gave me 1.2G.
It’s almost like those speed tests aren’t 100 percent accurate
I always recommend doing actual test file downloads.
There's plenty of sites you can use, download multiple of the larger files, even on different computers to really saturate the network.
Comcast typically tests out about 20% over rated speed. I have the 1.2Gbps plan, but it tests around 1.5Gbps. Not sure if other ISPs are similar.
Don’t know if that would explain the router…I don’t know if every gigabit router has a hard limit.
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Fast.com sucks, I find the command line Speedtest.net the most accurate.
Inflation!
Cable internet is the reason why. Sometimes you may get faster, sometimes you will get slower. Just depends on how many people around you are using their bandwidth.
I really like speedof.me. it gives you a more accurate view of how your internet worked because it will graph what your download and upload looked like for the time it was testing.
I tend to get 20% faster than the service I’m paying for as well. I’m not sure why but I’m not mad.
I’ve seen the same thing with Fast. I like that you can configure the number of streams, but sometimes you need to close all instances of your browser with them.
Most ISPs have a soft cap on their services. This would only last until they get oversold, and then they switch it to a hard cap.
🤫, act cool, nothing to see here Mr internet provider company.
I hate fast
Test it with iperf3
Can't speak for your provider, but if your router only has 1 GbE ethernet ports, this isn't possible. You will need at least 2.5GbE ports to get this speed.
Wifiman.com
More reliable
That’s drinkin’ buddy.
Cabling is rated for a specific speed. Could it be possible it's exceeding the rating under the right conditions (quality cable, length, etc.)?
Fast does the same thing for me, but rarely. I usually use speedof.me or speedtest.
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