does it matter which country servers are based when running speedtest?

[skinnydad]

newbie trying to understand the speedtest. I noticed that all the speedtests are located primarily in the USA. If you are a utorrent user and reside in the UK should you use a UK based speedtest because the response will not have to travel the Atlantic and back? or is this irrelevant? I believe the process is to run a few times and average the uploadspeed. Then set is this correct? thanks SD

[jewelisheaven]

Sure thing, yea I think the guide mentions this (choose local mirror) but the reason is so that it minimizes outside factors which affect your linespeed. Sure if you know you're going to primarily download from / upload to people in the USA you can use the US based server to tell you what kind of bandwidth you can get. You are quite right about distance affecting the test sometimes especially when you're talking about submarine cables (US <- Atlantic Ocean -> Europe AND Hawaii / South-East Asia <- Pacific Ocean -> Australia are prime examples). Yup you should run the test multiple times, DURING different times if you're trying to figure out whether your ISP puts you on a shaping profile (network management tool to keep users from using all the available internet all their users have access to). Although really you'd want to run a test torrent from the Setup Guide for 2-5 minutes to check for sustained download speeds since speedtests are HTTP in nature not bittorrent, and any ISP which limits HTTP traffic will get a revolt on their hands.

[skinnydad]

thanks jewelisheaven I'll give this a try this is the last part of trying to figure how this all fits togther. I have my port forwarded etc just checking to see what other options I need set. want to get the best possible response. thanks again...sd