In the past few months I have been testing two ISP that are providing a 10 Mbps link service to the internet. I have been able to properly verify that they are providing that bandwidth up to the equipments in their premises. Problem is that in my geographical area there is no local peering between all providers. So basically the traffic from any of my clients that want to access my web servers have to go through their ISP, up to the continental US (wherever NAP they are connected to), to "bounce" to the ISP providing me the service to finally reach my site. Because of that it was requested from the selected ISPs to provide the 10 Mbps service symmetrical (upload is very important to me), up to any point in the continental USA. Provider A have routers collocated at a site in Miami and I was able to properly test the service with those routers. Provider B connects through three other local providers and does not have a server or device in the continental US that I can use for the test. For that reason I test their performances using M-LABS network test servers, Speedtest servers and Speakeasy speed test servers. All test where conducted on same conditions (servers, time, etc). Test from those sites shown that Provider A was effectively providing the requested symmetrical 10 Mbps service when tested from my servers. With Provider B only the download is showing 10 Mbps but NOT the upload which give only from 5 up to 7 Mbps depending of the selected test site. Provider B is now telling me that my tests are not fair and that they are indeed providing the requested service. Then they show me some data to a server at Texas using Iperf but performing the test only with UDP and NOT TCP. They said that Speedtest, M-Labs, etc. are not valid test for reasons that I cannot understand.
I will like to get your feedback about this. Am I wrong the way I’m testing them? Can somebody please explain in simple terms why Speedtest or M-Labs cannot be use as a valid way to test ISPs? In my opinion what is equal offers no advantage and at this point I have to remove Provider B but I want to be fair with both providers and if I’m doing something wrong I’m willing to amend my mistake to give provider B another chance. How do you test and measure your ISP service? Am I right with my assertions about providing an excellent service to my clients in terms of traffic/bandwidth when there is no local peering?
Please give me any advice.
Thanks.