Talkiet:

plambrechtsen: And here is the problem with TCP and long ping times. Without tweaking of your TCP stack or multiple threads you will never get fast speeds to the other side of the world.

If you really wanted a good speed test you should use UDP and measure how much data is dropped or what is the maximum speed it can arrive at.

I doubt you will see anything faster than 15mb ever to the UK or NL. It's just how TCP works on long round trips.

Except speedtest.net (and possibly other speedtests) fudge their tests and estimate line speeds. It's only partially related to the actual traffic they exchange as part of the test. And they use multiple threads, and they use a non centrally tended subset of results and then they add a fudge factor for 'overheads'

It's a miracle that speedtest.net results ever match expectations.

Cheers - N