MyConnection PC FAQ

• What firewall settings are required for MyConnection PC to function fully?
• What is the difference between Application Speed testing and Capacity Speed testing?
• What is the QOS percentage?
• What is Max Pause?
• What is RTT?
• Why are download and upload speeds different?
• Why do I get different results at different times?
• Will MyConnection work through my firewall?
• Can I add MyConnection tests to my website?
• Why are the time stamps shown in the table incorrect?

Tracerouting requires:

•  ICMP Echo-Request outbound (type 8 code 0)
•  ICMP Echo-Reply inbound (type 0 code 0)
•  ICMP TTL Expired inbound (type 11 code 0)
•  ICMP Destination Unreachable inbound (type 3, all codes) – not required, but recommended as it can sometimes provide extra info

Speed testing requires (to the test server):

•  Port 80 TCP
•  Port 20000 TCP (download socket)
•  Port 20001 TCP (upload socket)

Note port 20000/20001 is just the default – it could change depending on which server you’re testing to.

Populating the list (of servers to test to) requires HTTP (TCP-80) to our website.

Application speed is the actual real end-to-end speed that a TCP application will achieve for the connection being tested. This will encompass all the inherent TCP flow control delays as well as quality invoked delays, such as packet loss. In other words it is an accurate measure created by a test process that ensures the data flow matches the requirement of the application such as a Video.

Capacity Speed is NOT usually a measure of how a connection will perform when used to view a video or listen to music, but is a measure of the data rate a connection can sustain, i.e. a Capacity of the connection. As a result Capacity Speed is unlikely to provide result that reflects the user’s real experience. More info.

MyConnection reports the Quality of Service (QOS) for your Internet connection, which represents the level of consistent download bandwidth (or throughput) provided by your ISP. The higher QOS percentage, the higher the overall quality of the connection -- which results in better connections for VoIP (voice over IP), Citrix and other high traffic applications. More info.

Max Pause or Max Delay is the longest pause recorded during the download speed test. This should be a very small number. If not, it could indicate Internet congestion or a bad Internet connection. More info.

Round-Trip Time is the time taken for MyConnection PC to send a small request packet to the server, and to receive back a response. This indicates how good the connection path is between you and the server. For best results on a broadband connection, you should test using a server with a RTT of less than 150ms, and ideally less than 100ms. Of course, if your connection is performing poorly then the RTT will be greater than this - and that provides another statistic to report to your ISP. More info.

Most broadband vendors design their networks with 'typical usage' in mind. For the Internet, most people spend a lot more time downloading (music, videos, web sites, etc) than uploading (sending email, etc). By using this design, the savings (in a lower cost network) are passed on to you.

Under ideal network conditions, MyConnection PC will provide virtually identical results every time that it is run (verified in lab conditions). And that accuracy is only possible because MyConnection measures data transfers down the millisecond (1/1000 second), while most other speed testers can only time data transfers accurate to 1/100 of a second (10's of milliseconds). So MyConnection PC is very precise.

However, in most environments, you will find that you are sharing the network, your Internet connection, and the server you are connecting to, with other Internet users. So unless you are the only person using the network and the server, you can and should expect some variation in the results.

If you see wildly different results each time MyConnection is run, that strongly suggests that you are sharing your network and/or server with too many other Internet users.

It should. However, some aggressive firewall techniques may interfere with the MySpeed upload test. If you experience problems please contact us.

For information on hosting MyConnection tests on your website please see MyConnection Server.

The time stamps in the table are all supposed to be local, however there is a known issue in Java itself which can cause the wrong timestamp to be shown.

There's information on this bug here: http://www.petefreitag.com/item/171.cfm

An official bug report was filed with Sun Microsystems (the makers of Java), though it was closed as 'not reproducible' despite evidence to the contrary: http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6362432

We would suggest the following:

(1) Please try updating your Java VM. Most customers have found that this solves the problem completely.
(2) If this fails, try switching off the "adjust clock for daylight savings time" option. We have found that this solves the problem under older Java VMs.

If the issue still presents itself then please contact us.