- Internet Speed Test
- Download Speed
- Upload Speed
- Ping Rate
- Jitter
- How to Improve Your Internet Speed?
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Speed Test
- Why should I test my internet speed with an internet speed test?
- WiFi Speed Test Online
- Test my internet speed?
- How to test download speed?
- How to test upload speed?
- How to test ping?
- Internet Speed Metrics
- What is download speed?
- What is upload speed?
- What is a ping (latency)?
- Why should I test my internet?
- How fast is your internet?
Internet Speed Test
Internet Speed Test check how fast is your WiFi network or broadband internet speed upload and download, ping, jitter, and bandwidth by Ookla Speed Test. By taking an internet speed test you can measure the speed between your device and a test server. This will ensure that you are getting the speed which was promised to you by your internet service provider. Below are the metrics recorded by the speed check:
Download Speed
It represents how quick your network can receive data from the internet servers in a certain time frame. Download speed is measured in mega-bits-per-seconds (Mbps).
Upload Speed
This means how fast your internet network can send data to a server. It is important during video calling, online gaming and voice or video call and measured in megabits-per-second (Mbps).
Ping Rate
A ping rate is the reaction time of how fast you receive back a response after you have sent a request to a server. The lower the ping rate the better it is. Ping is measured in milliseconds (ms).
Jitter
Jitter is the fluctuation of response times (ping). Lower jitter score is good whereas higher jitter represents an inconsistent connection resulting in choppy voice calling, video buffering and glitchy gameplay.
How to Improve Your Internet Speed?
For better and more accurate speed test result connect your wired (ethernet) cable to your computer directly and close all other application that consumes internet bandwidth. Here are some tips you can follow to enhance your WiFi experience:
- Use device in close proximity to router: Staying within 100 feet range or closer to your router will increase your WiFi speed. Position the network box at the center of your home.
- Connect to 5GHz network: Devices such as microwaves, the baby monitor uses 2.4 GHz frequency or signal from neighbours can interfere your performance.
- Turn off automatic updates: The updates happening in the background can severely affect your connection, consider disabling unnecessary updates.
- Adjust your router’s position: Try placing your router in different places. If your router has adjustable antennas try reconfiguring them.
- Use a WiFi extender: If you are still experiencing a slow internet connection, try using a WiFi booster that extends the signal from the main point.
- Upgrade to a faster data plan: Maybe it is time to upgrade the data plan. Make sure your current router supports the speed range to avoid bottleneck issues.
Frequently Asked Questions
There are several factors that matters which defines your internet speed test result that includes but not limited to:
- The device from which you are testing: Computer, laptop, mobile devices each has their own cellular radio capabilities and WiFi frequencies so you may see a varied results.
- The test server you choose: Generally, if you choose a test server closer to you it will give a better result than one in a distance. Also other speed testing services such as Speedtest.net, Speedof.me, TestMyNet, Fast.com may use their own server for which you will receive different results. It is recommended to perform multiple tests in order to get a better estimation.
- The proximity of your device and router: Ideally you should directly connect the broadband ethernet cable to your computer because there may be several device frequencies and wall blockades that may decrease the actual speed.
By taking a speed check you are sending and receiving data from your computer to the server. The internet speed test tool will select the server closer to you for optimal results by default. You are free to choose from the hundreds of servers available however if you are choosing a far distant server it may translate to a slower result.
Yes, you can take the broadband speed test on your desktop computer, laptop, tablet, phones and most of the major operating systems.
You can transfer large amount of files on any internet speed but the time it will take depends upon the capability of your internet. Here’s a report from Ookla Speedtest.net that shows how much time it will take to transfer 1 GB data from 1.5 Mbps to 1 Gbps speed:
Transfer Speed (Mbps) | Theoretical Time (Seconds) |
1.5 | 5,333 |
5 | 1,600 |
10 | 800 |
20 | 400 |
50 | 160 |
100 | 80 |
250 | 32 |
500 | 16 |
1,000 | 8 |
There can be several reasons why you are experiencing a poor connection than what you have expected. Try to:
- Use your ethernet cable directly to your computer. Other radio frequency, physical wall blockades, the distance of your router can be a major factor.
- Pause or close all other applications and browsers. Video streaming, background updates can significantly reduce your internet speed.
- Restart your router and perform the speed test again in some time. You may experience a slower internet during the night because of network usage.
A lower ping rate gets you to experience a smooth online gaming. For most broadband connection the average ping amounts of 100 ms. In rage of 50 ms to 100 ms it is considered “low ping” anything about 150 ms or more is “high ping”. A ping of 20 ms or below is exceptional.
Since we are a third-party service sending and receiving tiny data packets from our server to your computer the internet firewall or adblocks may consider this as a threat and block the connection. If you are receiving some error try disabling your real-time antivirus temporarily and see if it’s working. Make sure to turn it back on once you are done with the test.
Speed Test
Why should I test my internet speed with an internet speed test?
An internet speed test measures the connection speed and quality of your connected device to the internet. It does so by running multiple consecutive tests that analyze different aspects of your internet connection, namely ping (latency), download speed, and upload speed. Each of these values represents the connection’s specific qualities, which you can read more about in the paragraph after the next. This should give you a clue on how to understand the final test results. But before we get to these, we first want to discuss how to perform each test.
WiFi Speed Test Online
Running a WiFi Speed Test is the right solution for most people if they encounter connectivity issues as they are usually internet speed related. The reason is simple. Most of the devices on your home network today are not connected with a wired connection anymore. They are all connected via WiFi. So to figure out if your connectivity issues are due to your ISP, your wireless connection or a local router issue running a WiFi Test will give you the insights you’re looking for. Just run multiple tests, one close to your WiFi Hotspot and one in the place where you’re having issues because the signal strength diminishes. If the internet speeds are the same for the weak and strong signal, it’s likely an ISP issue. If the interet speeds differ on your connected devices, however, the poor connectivity is likely either due to a local misconfiguration or device capabilities. Maybe your device is not connecting to the correct WiFi hotspot, so it must go through a thick wall. Selectively enabling and disabling your WiFi hotspots can quickly help identify the problematic device. You can run a WiFi speed test on all your devices to idenitify the ones that have a strong WiFi signal and the ones that don’t. In addition you could check internet speed with a network speed test as well to compare wireless and wired connectivity.
Test my internet speed?
To learn more about the specific requirements of the bandwidth speed test, we’ve prepared the sections below that will explain the details of what actually happening during the speedtest.
How to test download speed?
To speed test internet performance for downloading data the test is performed by opening multiple connections to a server and simultaneously starting the download of a large data file on all connections. This approach ensures that the entire bandwidth of the internet connection is maxed out, and thereby the maximum data throughput can be measured. Recording the data throughput against measurement time finally yields the available internet speed for downloading data.
How to test upload speed?
Upload speed is tested by reversing the sequence of the download analysis. Again multiple connections are opened to the test server. Instead of downloading a file, a large file of random data is created on your device and pushed through all connections to the server. Pushing the data to the server over the network via multiple streams ensures that the maximum throughput is measured. Again, recording the data throughput against time yields the available internet speed for uploading data.
How to test ping?
During the ping test, the device sends a small data package over the network to the test server on the internet. This test doesn’t focus on upload speeds but on response time. When the server receives this package, it will send it back to the device, completing the roundtrip. The time it takes the data package to complete the roundtrip is called latency, also known as ping. To achieve an accurate reading, multiple ping tests are conducted consecutively, with the final result being the average of all these tests.
All these are automatically handled for you when you use Speedcheck to test internet speed. But you should take one crucial aspect into account to test speed accurately. Choose the right tool. This depends on the device you want to use, being a phone or tablet, or a computer. To check internet speed on a computer, use your browser and the app on this website. To achieve accurate results on mobile devices, you should download our iOS or Android app, respectively. This is especially important when running a WiFi speed test. Because browsers on mobile devices have poor performance, we suggest using a mobile app written in native code to ensure the most accurate test results.
Internet Speed Metrics
What is download speed?
Download speed determines the transfer rate of how fast data is transferred to your device from the internet. It’s calculated by dividing the total throughput of data in a given time frame by its duration. Therefore its unit is denoted by units of data over time. Most often, download speeds are denoted in Megabits per second (Mbps or Mb/s), although other forms like Kilobits per second (Kbps or Kb/s) or Megabyte per second (MBps or MB/s) are also common.
What is upload speed?
Upload speeds as opposed to download speeds characterize the amount of data your device can send to the internet. It’s calculated the same way and is therefore denoted in the same units. Upload speed is very important for online gaming and video calls, where you need as much speed as possible.
What is a ping (latency)?
The ping or latency describes the delay of a signal due to the time it takes that signal to travel to its destination. In this context, it represents the time it takes a data package to complete its roundtrip over the network and the acknowledgment from the server that it was received. As a value of time, it is denoted as such, most often in Milliseconds (ms). It’s a value for the responsiveness of your connection that also correlates with packet loss. A high latency will lead to more packet loss while a low latency will ensure almost none.
Why should I test my internet?
I can test my internet speed to learn about my connection speeds. This enables me to a) ensure that I’m getting what I’m paying for from my internet service provider and b) helps me adapt my expectations about what type of applications I can run like online games or video calls without issues on my network.
How fast is your internet?
It’s important to understand that different internet speeds are necessary for different usage scenarios. Both download and upload speeds determine what’s possible. So when you test internet speed, keep in mind that the question «How fast is my internet?» can only be answered in relation to what you want to use the connection for. While simply browsing the web can be achieved with low single-digit megabit per second speeds, streaming Netflix in 4K resolution will need a maximum speed of at least a 25Mbps connection speed. Online gaming will primarily be influenced by your ping, with a smaller ping being better while publishing content on the web, like uploading large videos to Youtube will be primarily constrained by your upload bandwidth. To download files especially large files at a good speed you should aim for a download speed with a transfer rate of at least 10Mbps.