Broadband speedtest

2009 Oct 29 at 09:14 » Tagged as :broadband, road.lk,

The other day, an idiot from SLT, tried to convince me that their 512kb/s ADSL line is as fast as a 2048kb/s WiMax link. You can expect people at SLT to make statements like that. Many of them probably hadn't seen a computer till they joined the company. There is a huge shortage of geeks at Telecom companies in Sri Lanka.

In actual fact, a 512kbps SLT ADSL line only gives about 430kb/s

SLT speed

Notice that this test is being carried out against, SLT's own speedtest server in Colombo. It's only about 10 Kilometers away but it still takes 32 milliseconds for a ping. Remember Electronic signals travel at 300,000km/s so this indicates slow routers.

How does SLT perform when you test against a distance server? Much worse.

SLT speed

Right, now let's see how Lanka Bell WiMax Performs:

SLT speed

SLT speed

Lankabell's ping isn't so good either but the upload and download speeds are right up there. You get more than 90% of the advertised speed. SLT's subsidiary Mobitel has a mobile broadband service. Here is the speed test:

SLT speed

SLT speed

I even stepped outdoors to see if that would improve the speed (since 3.5g signals don't travel well through masonry).

So in short, if you want an ADSL line that can be compared to a 2mbps WiMax link, you will have to get a 4mbps line.