Download speed?
 

According to Speedtest my connection is operating at 6.72 Mbps yet an actual download is running between 40 and 50 KB/sec, meaning that 358 MB takes about 2 hours.

Can anyone explain this discrepancy between the Speedtest result and the actual download speed?

well......one answer is that the speedtest.net test is rather unreliable

try this one thinkbroadband :: UK Broadband Speed Test

but remember a specific download is only a part of your download throughput, and that you may be limited by the upload speed of the site you are downloading from.........and if you're a regular downloader your ISP may have throttled your connection

what sort of file are you pulling down, and who is your ISP

What Milo said.

Speed test (note the space, I'm talking generically here !) need to be taken with a significant pinch of salt.

There are so many factors that could influence the results, including but not limited to :
(a) Your infrastructure (problems on your PC and home/work network)
(b) Your ISP (packet shaping, contention etc.)
(c) The path traffic from your ISP takes to their ISP
(d) Their ISP (packet shaping, contention etc)
(e) Their infrastructure (e.g. temporary problems on testing server)

I have found "Speedtest" to be particularly unreliable and inconsistent. "thinkbroadband" is better (and indeed, I know the people and the network behind it and can vouch for their technical know-how) .... but that still doesn't make "thinkbroadband" or any other test immune from the points raised above because they can't have control over all four ("thinkbroadband" have 100% control over d & e, and attempt to influence c by technical means although that's a bit of a black art ....... "speedtest" merely link to tests hosted by third parties, so they have limited control over quality).

The 40-50Kb/sec download is the upload speed of the server you are connected to. If they are tight on bandwidth, you get polling. The speed test is normaly a local server to you with high bandwidth and connection speed.

Strange: I have a 1Mb WiMax connection and speedtest consistantly shows I'm at this speed (give or take a few points) up and down, day or night.

Actual internet connection is something else with a lot of stuttering on (eg) YouTube at busy times.

Think about Speedtest (and many other speed testers) as like being asked to time yourself driving across town. If your town is quiet, your results are likely to be repeatable within a few seconds, but if you live in a town with random traffic jams you're likely to get a wide range of times. Same with speedtest as that's exactly what it's trying to do at the network level.

What he said is the plain english translation of what I said.... sometimes the simplest explanations are the easiest for people to understand ! Nice analogy !!

Tune in next week for "why networking is like plumbing" :ok: