realtime and totals do not match real life

[maughanorama]

if for instance im on my laptop and download a file say 10mb in size. i do not get the true bandwidth used for that ip.
heres an example
192.168.1.154 usage speedtest.net
in the list of ip 192.168.1.154 total is only 649kb and the realtime is 72 b/s despite my speedtest.net going to 65mb/s
am i missing something ?
thanks

[Kiougar]

Hey @maughanorama, the way the "realtime" speed is calculated is by dividing the amount of total bytes observed, with the measuring time window (which is equivalent to the auto-refresh interval).
For example, if you have set a 5 seconds refresh interval and let's say 500Kb were downloaded during these 5 seconds, then the "realtime" download speed should be 500Kb / 5s = 100Kb/s.

Now for the speedtest.net case, I don't exactly know how they do it, so don't quote me on this, but from what you suggest it seems the following is happening: They use multiple bursts of small sized byte packets, to measure your speed multiple times by calculating the amount of time your browser took to download these packets. At the end you are presented with the average speed observed. If their measuring time window is significantly smaller than the auto-refresh interval (i.e. this module's measuring time window), then the speed will always be different.

On the other hand, if you download a huge file (i.e. a file that takes longer than X seconds to download - where X is the auto-refresh interval), the realtime speed will always be accurate and theoretically match the maximum speed observed by the speedtest.

Sorry for the block of text - but I wanted to be as detailed as possible :)