Printed from www.pcpro.co.uk
Broadband speedtest snoops on the neighbours
Posted on 19 Oct 2009 at 09:16
A new broadband speedtest is promising to reveal how fast your neighbours' connection is, so that you can keep up with the Joneses.
Top10 Broadband's revamped site reveals on a map the ISP and actual connection speed achieved by people in your area. The site hopes the service will give people a fairer indication of the speeds they could achieve with an alternative ISP.
PC Pro was given an early preview of the new site, and we discovered the speedtest comes with a few caveats. The map doesn't reveal what the maximum capacity of the line is, only the speed measured by Top10 Broadband's speedtest. That means that if one of your neighbours is only paying for a 8Mbits/sec connection, for instance, while another is on a 20Mbits/sec service, the latter's ISP will naturally appear to be faster, even though that isn't necessarily the case.
The site will also make recommendations about the fastest ISP in your area. However, that relies on having sufficent data about each ISP, which means that smaller ISPs such as the PC Pro award-winning Zen Internet are often not listed.
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Click here to see the detailed scores for 17 of Britain's leading ISPsPlotting people's broadband speeds on a map also raises privacy questions, especially in rural areas where it could be reasonably easy to match a particular ISP and speed to individual properties. Top10 Broadband insists that people can have their speedtest removed from the map upon request.
Clearly wary of recent criticism of internet-based speedtest sites, Top10 Broadband claims the site is suitable for measuring connection speeds of up to 100Mbits/sec. It uses varying data payloads of up to 10MB to measure the download speed.
The new Top10 Broadband speedtest should be going live today.
Author: Barry Collins
Well Ijust tried this test twice and both times it completed the download test and then hung on the upload test meaning results were unattainable. Another 30 minutes of my life wasted...
By jamesv1001 on 19 Oct 2009 
Ok it was a case of third time lucky and has now worked. 1.9 mb with Talk Talk. Same speed I was getting 7 years ago. Great to see Digital Britain going according to plan, not...
By jamesv1001 on 19 Oct 2009
Could be worse though I just checked my area and the only other listing is for Orange, with a download of speed of 0.2 mb lol.
By jamesv1001 on 19 Oct 2009
Only fair to update. Spoke to Talk Talk who reset my line, and now Im getting 4.75 mb. 10/10 for Talk Talk support.
By jamesv1001 on 19 Oct 2009
Sorry ! Due to overwhelming demand, we have had to pause our new StreetStats and speed test tools for the time being.
We are working flat out to get everything working again, so please check back later!
By baileytech on 19 Oct 2009
Do they do a server capacity test as well?
Because they could do with it themselves...
By JohnGray7581 on 19 Oct 2009
Recommendations?
Interesting mix of results - at teh top, it says my line is capable of 1Mb
it gives a test result of 1.8Mb
under this it lists Virgin as it's highest recommendation - with 'up to' 20Mb...
By greemble on 20 Oct 2009
Virgin
Is this sponsored by Virgin? It also gives Virgin as the highest speed in my area, but strangely enough they do not have any cable presence in my post code area.
By TomDonoghue on 22 Oct 2009
and this works HOW exactly?
because according to this my existing BT Proadband package can give me "up to" 20mb, that's a loose term given I only just got upgraded (sic) to a blistering 2mb on a good day with the wind in the right direction...
By steve_matthews1 on 22 Oct 2009
This is a joke ?
I can max out my connection at 8mb no issues yet using this server I only get 5.7mb ? I think this is purely an advertising scam
By Baggz on 22 Oct 2009
How accurate
I just tried this test and it gave 0.5Mb/s , then tried speedtest.net and got 5Mb/s
By lightm1 on 22 Oct 2009
Accuracy or Advertising??
I operate a small mobile computer repair workshop in my locality, (a small geographical location) and am aware of the poor speeds available on BB locally, due in the main, to old copper wires, and distance from the Exchange.
I have records of the speeds actually obtained by 50 of my customers who live in this location and so I was interested to see what figures this firm are estimating as being achieved...... You will not be surprised to learn that the figures actually achieved are a fraction of what this service purports to being available...... I will leave you to draw your own conclusions
By paws2 on 24 Oct 2009
paws2 please provide a sample of the data ie your customers results and the results from Top10 Broadband. Otherwise the only conclusion that can be drawn is that you are full of s h i t .
By dodge1963 on 26 Oct 2009
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