Wildly different network speed tests

Posted on September 30, 2018

Did speed test on my 2 droplets, which are in the same location (LON1). I get wildly different results. Why?

1st droplet:

Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Structured Communications (London) [0.96 km]: 2.18 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 1861.33 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 366.57 Mbit/s

2nd droplet:

Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Spitfire Network Services (London) [0.96 km]: 2.65 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 3102.50 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 1664.52 Mbit/s

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Moisey Uretsky

October 11, 2019

Based on the results you provided a different source was chosen for each transfer which is why you saw a difference in speed.

The first one selected:

Hosted by Structured Communications (London) [0.96 km]: 2.18 ms

The second one selected:

Hosted by Spitfire Network Services (London) [0.96 km]: 2.65 ms

While they are both in London they are on different networks which is why you saw the difference in speed.

alexdo

July 5, 2021

Hello,

I’ve often had a similar issue when testing this with the speedtest tool, so I decided to get the latest speedtest script rather than using the one available from the repository:

Get the latest version of the script:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/master/speedtest.py

Make the file executable:

chmod +x speedtest.py

Run the script:

python speedtest.py

So my guess would be that the speedtest tool in the repository is outdated or something. It is always best to use the official instructions when installing tools on your system:

https://www.speedtestserver.com/

Hope that this helps! Regards, Alex