George Novak works in cabling and computing at University of Alberta.

Turns out these speed tests are highly inaccurate. The better way to check is with a stopwatch. Upload or download a large file and see how many minutes it takes.

I am attaching my internet speed test for my University connection. Internally we’re all on 1 gig switches and have a 100+ Mb pipe to the outside world, no firewall. As you can see it shows that we’re only about 3x faster than your Shaw connection, in reality it’s so much faster that you would hardly believe it.

I think the problem is that it does not indicate the route that is being taken when the test is done, the number of hops, the physical routing etc. Unless you can always test from the front end of your ISP you will always be at the mercy of the physical path taken to whatever destination you’re testing to and from. I would say that these kinds of test tend to be rather inconclusive as to your real speed capability.

In my own personal experience, I have never experienced better throughput on a Telus connection as I have on Shaw, even though they always claim it’s faster.

Stephen Neal who works for Telus would disagree. According to him, “Telus Rules, Shaw Drools!”

It’s time for a speed test with a stopwatch.

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