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Forum Discussion
Nighthawk App Speed Difference
I have AT&T gigabit internet and I measure speed with 2 different Speedtest Powered Apps: Nighthawk & AT&T Smart Home Manager. Both tests measure speed from the Router/Gateway. However the Nighthawk App measures significantly slower (~200mbps less) download speed compared to AT&T smarthome manager. Both tests are Speedtest powered so what’s the difference?
3 Replies
the difference is the nighthawk app rarely chooses the most appropriate server to test off. I don't recommend using it for speeds >500mbps. I usually recommend people test off a pc/laptop hardwired into the router.
- I would imagine there’s a pre-built library that Speedtest is providing for the Nighthawk app and for AT&T’s app. I’m wondering how the algorithms differ.
As previously stated, both apps are based on the gateway(AT&T) & router(Netgear RAX48), so a Wifi connection doesn't affect the speed test results. The "Speedtest Powered" code is not to blame. Essentially, the Netgear RAX48 hardware just isn't capable of accurately measuring download speeds on a 1 Gbps internet connection. During a RAX48 initiated speed test, all of the 3 RAX48 processor cores are loaded less than 10%. However, the memory usage is 481MB out of 496MB or approximately 97% usage. My conclusion is that there just simply isn't enough memory on the RAX48 for an accurate speed test, despite the "Ideal for Gigabit Internet Speeds" claim on the RAX48 packaging. Quite disappointing.
