Speedtest VS. System Monitor- Why didffferent?

English Network/Internet
#1

Hello, thanks in advance for helping.

The speed from my ISP is advertised as 15up/2 down. When I run speed test, I obtain that pretty much all the time, the lowest I have ever gotten was 12/2.

The issue I am seeing, is my downloads are very slow, even when downloading from a fast server. I ran a speed test and KDEsystemmonitor at the same time, and noticed that my download speed on the system monitor never goes above 1.9Mb down. Which coincides with when i see in the download manager of Firefox.

Can someone please explain this to me 1) is this normal, and if so Why? 2) If this is not normal, what can I do to fix it?

This may help you visualize: Onthe right is the system monitor and some konsole stuff, on the left is the speed test.

http://i.imgur.com/SayY7mm.png
thanks
John Kilbert

#2

They’re both correct, only speedtest is reporting in megabits and sysmon in megabytes. 15 mbps = 15/8 = 1.9 MBps.

#3

The speedtest shows the speed in Mib/s (Megabits per seconds), whereas KDE’ systemmonitor shows MiB/s (MegaBytes per seconds), notice the capitalization of the letter ‘B’.
As 1 Byte is 8 bits, they show about the same numbers:

  • 15.11 Mib/s (Speedtest) is about 1.89 MiB/s (divide by 8)
  • 1.9 MiB/s (KDE’s systemmonitor) is 15.2 Mib/s (multiply with 8)

So this is normal for a 15 Mib/s download link, yes.

#4

Ah, Thanks for the replies. I learned something today.