Broadband speed tests confuse consumers by neglecting to take account of a number of factors, it has been revealed.
Earlier this month, internet connection comparison website Broadband Genie claimed it has developed an online test able to analyse speeds of up to 20Mb and 50Mb.
Commenting on this, technology research firm OneStopClick stated that such assessments are designed to deliver results that merely reinforce the service being sold and as such do not instigate a test that will reflect the consumers' experience.
The group went on to say connection tests such as this are capacity tests rather than true connection speed tests and do not take into account connection delays caused by transmission control protocol (TCP) flow control or inherent latency and quality, therefore reporting only the 'capacity' speed attainable not usable.
Julian Palmer of OneStopClick commented: "All they appear to have done is test different speed testing applications until they got tests that deliver the results they want the customer to see."
He said that a capacity test will nearly always show the full capacity but a true application test will not "and more importantly cannot and should not" as it will not reflect the true throughput of the connection as experienced by the customer.
Mr Palmer added any test that does not publish the method used to conduct the test is of no value to the consumer. It is a bit like declaring the speed of a journey from London to New York but failing to mention it was using Concorde not a regular 747.
When a consumer undertakes the same journey they get frustrated that they cannot attain the same result. The company stated that to be of value any test must provide declaration of protocol used, determination of flow quality, determination of symmetry used, window scaling, compression ratio, congestion analysis, regulation analysis and of course route and route latency.
This month, Broadband Genie claimed speed and customer service are the main causes of broadband consumer dissatisfaction. That being the foundation of complaint makes it irresponsible for consumer services and speed testing services to publish test results which only serve to mislead the customer, commented OneStopClick, who went on to say that doing so only aggravates the disparity further.