Why is my speed test so slow?

N

nic05

Hi guys,

wondering if some of you could help me out with this. I just switched from trading at an office to trading from home, and had a cogeco enterprise business cable line installed in my place. I am paying over $200 a month for it and I am supposed to obtain speeds of up to 16 Mbps down and 1.5 Mbps up. The first day I had it I did a few speed tests at speak easy and I was getting about 15000 kbps from Belleville ON to New York and Chicago. today, however, I am only getting around 5000 kbps from ON to NY, although I am still getting about 9000-10000 to Chicago. My speeds through Speedtest.net are even slower for some reason. My trading has seemed ok but I want the speed I am paying for. Cogeco doesn't seem to see a problem on their end. How reliable are these speed tests and is there a better way to make sure my internet is working properly? I don't think it has anthing to do with my computer, as it is new and seems fine. I am using a comodo firewall but always have been.

thanks for any info or help :)
 
It is normal for there to exist variance in speed tests performed at various times of day/ week and as events occur. If you want to see consistency, find an off-peak time (like early Sunday morning) to perform periodic speed tests and compare test to test.

As there is volatility in the markets, there exists volatility in internet traffic. Cable systems seem to magnify the traffic congestion. Peak business hours would logically reflect the slowest speeds.

I have a similar yet not as extreme experience when I do speed tests. When curious I run the test early Sunday morning when I'm reading the newspaper. I prefer speedtest.net.
 
Quote from nic05:
had a cogeco enterprise business cable line installed in my place. I am paying over $200 a month for it and I am supposed to obtain speeds of up to 16 Mbps down and 1.5 Mbps up.
More...
Nic:

What did your office use to connect to the exchanges - an Internet connection or leased lines?

A leased line is very expensive and just runs between you and your broker or an exchange server. No Internet.

Any Internet connection is a shared resource.

A cable connection is shared between you and your cable company and then generally transits a shared national backbone provided by the major carriers. In effect, the cable company is putting you on a local area network (LAN). Unlike a cable company like Comcast, Cogeco probably limits the number of businesses it will connect to any specific LAN thereby keeping the connection speed high.

A DSL or FIOS connection is a direct connection between you and your carriers router. It then shares the national backbone Internet connection just like the cable connection.

As was pointed out by mgookin, once you are on the Internet there is a competition for resources. The large commercial carriers have huge bandwidth available so any slowdown you see during the day is probably the result of a high demand locally (if you use cable) or a need to resize its servers by your broker. From what you stated in your post everything works well, you just see a lowering of available bandwidth (Mbps). For all practical purposes the only time this would affect you is if you were using the entire bandwidth. In trading we rarely do, even if we are just running 1 Mbps. Depending on your computer's operating system, you can see or log your network usage\loading.

Take a look at your connection's latency. It is a measure of how long it takes a signal to get between you and another location. If you see a lot of variation then you might want to look into it. This company has a free latency program or a low cost slightly fancier version. http://www.pingplotter.com

Jack
 
Thanks guys...I will give that a try.

I used to trade on a t1 line in the office but we switched over to a business cable package several months ago. I figured this would be even better, as it is faster (max 16 down compared to 10 down in the office) and I would be the only one using my line. I am still getting max 5000-6000 from ON to NY, yet it is much faster to Chicago for some reason. The first day it worked perfectly though.

I will try the ping test and call cogeco again if i notice too much variance.

Thanks again :)
 
Here are the results of two difference speed tests I did today from Ontario to NY at almost the same time.
Speak Easy :

1776 kbps down
1322 kbps up

speedtest.net

8307 kb/s
1423 kb/s up

I am paying for 16 Mbps / month. Do my results seem odd? I lost connection from my trading server several times today, but I am not sure if that is due to my internet connection or the trading platform itself. I have someone coming out tomorrow, but they are insisting that everything is fine on their end.
 
Quote from nic05:

Here are the results of two difference speed tests I did today from Ontario to NY at almost the same time.
Speak Easy :

1776 kbps down
1322 kbps up

speedtest.net

8307 kb/s
1423 kb/s up

I am paying for 16 Mbps / month. Do my results seem odd? I lost connection from my trading server several times today, but I am not sure if that is due to my internet connection or the trading platform itself. I have someone coming out tomorrow, but they are insisting that everything is fine on their end.
More...

You say you're paying for 16 megs/ month. I think you mean to say you're paying for 16 mbps data rate; please correct me if I'm wrong.

If you're paying for 16 mbps you're not getting it at least on those test results. But I did see where for what seemed like a couple hours today there was material internet problem(s) where Google, Earthlink and other sites would not load/ connect. Maybe you ran your tests during that problem. You may want to try those tests again tomorrow or better yet, on a weekend morning when internet traffic is light/ nil.

Even with the internet problem cited above coupled with two rounds of the strongest storms of the year (and we get wicked storms here in the tropics), my trading kept up all day with no problems.

What type of data connection do you have? That's the starting point for "why is my data connection slow(er)?"
 
thanks for the reply Mgookin :)

Here is my cable package:


Features ENTERPRISE
Speed Download* Up to 16 Mbps
Speed Upload Up to 1.5 Mbps
Data transfer/month (bitcap) Unlimited
Email Space per address 100 MB
Web space Visit cogecohosting.com
IP Addresses 10 reserved
Static IP*** Available

Price** $209.95 /month
Modem rental included


So it is supposed to be very fast. I am with World Trade, so I am using sterling software. I have had issues with slow quotes in the office too, but today it seemed as though I was losing connection altogether for several seconds at a time (data connection lost error kept popping up) . I realize that there will be some variance with the speed test results throughout the day/week, but I dont seem to ever be getting more than around 8 kbps no matter when I check . I think I spent more time doing speed tests than trading today actually , and losing connection to the data server when I had 6000 shares on ISIL didn't help me much either !
 
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