Why do these speed tests start out slow and then get faster over the course of a few seconds?
Is it something about the internet that means the speed changes so much over the course of the test?
Is it something about the internet that means the speed changes so much over the course of the test?
TCP initially starts with a small transmission buffer (the congestion window), and gradually increases its size until it starts getting errors (packet drops or reordering).
But the first keyword I would look at would be BGP.
Generally speaking, routing decisions are dynamic and constantly changing. Add the unreliability of the network layer, corporate politics and optimization heuristics to that and you get varying results.
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