Broadband Expert gets #fail from ISP CEO

Stephen Withers
Friday, 26 February 2010 18:01

Your IT - Home IT

A prominent CEO has slammed recent claims that Australian ISPs fall short when it comes to performance.

As previously reported by iTWire, comparison site Broadband Expert has asserted that ISPs are on average delivering less than half the claimed nominal download speed.

iTWire raised some doubts about the methodology, and a Telstra spokesperson was dismissive of the findings.

Now, Simon Hackett, CEO of Internode, has provided iTWire with a technical indictment of Broadband Expert's approach. "It's hard to know where to start. There are so many things wrong with both the test and the press release put out about the test," he said.

Hackett's first technical objection is that there appears to be only one server, which is located in Melbourne. This explains why performance in Victoria is higher than other states.

Furthermore, he says that server has performance bottlenecks: "Some simple tests from my 100 Mbps connected office machine show that the test server can not send data at a sustained rate above about 45 Mbps (and a short term peak around 60 Mbps). No combination of tests run at once (up to three) added up to a speed above this level."

What other faults does Hackett find in Broadband Expert's test? See page 2.