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Every time I use it, it always seems to give exactly the speed my ISP is advertising +-1%, whereas other services (that actually do something, but happen to report the speed at which they do so) have only half or less the speed. Also it doesn't seem to be affected by running torrents. Speedtest gives some info here about cutting off the top 10% and the bottom 30% of speeds, then averaging. Does that really result in doubling the actual speed?

Besides personal expeirience, I have also heard various stories of how either speedtest.net is paid by the ISP to report the speed you paid for or that the ISP prioritizes speedtest data.

Shelvacu
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  • According to the [FAQ](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/faq#questions), Skeptics StackExchange is for researching the evidence behind the claims you hear or read. This question doesn't appear to have any doubtful claims to investigate. Please edit it to reference a notable claim and flag for moderator attention to re-open (or get 5 re-open votes). – Jamiec Oct 01 '14 at 10:58
  • Out of curiosity, what kind of evidence or arguments would you accept to prove this claim either way? – Shadur Oct 01 '14 at 12:39
  • @Shadur I was hoping for maybe a study of multiple people comparing speedtest to downloading a few large files at once and seeing how the speeds differ. – Shelvacu Oct 01 '14 at 19:02
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    shelvacu - as an anecdotal point. My ISP says 8Mb, speedtest says 2.2Mb. So that invalidates your premise in one swell foop. – Rory Alsop Oct 03 '14 at 10:22
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    Every year or so, lots of people on facebook seem to show of their speedtest.net results. Most of the time the (download) speed was like 10-20% below the ISPs advertised speed. Unfortunately they do not show the ISP advertised speed, but looking through some image searches of "speedtest results" on google shows so much "odd" numbers that it can't be all within 1% of the advertised speed (unless someones advertises stuff like 23.9mbit) – PlasmaHH Oct 06 '14 at 15:02

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