4 Different Ways to Test your Internet Speed.
Are you always waiting for your web pages to load? Or are you spending more time waiting for the video to finish buffering than watching it? If so, you need to check your internet speed to make sure your Internet Service Provider (ISP) is giving you the speed it charges you! How do you do it? Well, just – Speed ​​Tests. But it’s not that simple.
Why use more than one service to check your internet speed?
Your ISPs can easily prioritize popular websites for speed testing. Or, the fastest website might be running with low server bandwidth. So in both cases, even if the speed website says you are getting 100Mbps download speeds, your actual download speed may actually be less or faster than that.
So let’s move on to the ways to determine your internet speed.
Related: See What Others Are Viewing On Your Wi-Fi
Ways to test your internet speed
1. Speed ​​test sites online
For the average user whose needs range from checking Internet speed or wanting to brag about it to friends, Internet speed check sites do a great job.
The two most popular internet speed test sites are speedtest.net and fast.com.
1.1 Speedtest.no
When it comes to internet speed testing sites, speedtest.net is number one. It has powerful statistical tools and an easy to understand and fun interface. It has a display-like speedometer that displays your upload and download speeds as well as ping speeds. After completing the test, you can even see your speed change during the test as a graph. This test uses a flash plugin to determine your speed. In general, for the average user, this is a site where you can check your internet speed.
Does Speedtest.net work in a mobile browser?
Not directly. But there is a workaround: just visit Speedtest from your mobile browser like Chrome and enable the desktop browser. Then this will work
1.2 Fast.com
Fast.com is Netflix’s way of empowering users to understand why their Netflix streaming is slow. Its design is minimal, which only gives you information about the download speed. This is because download speed is the only criterion for streaming Netflix content. Unlike speedtest.net, there are no ping, latency or load test results. Just go to the site and the test will start by itself, no clicks required! During the test, your internet speed is displayed in gray, which turns black after the test is completed. Fast.com is a good tool if you don’t want to be bothered by ads or need more information about your internet.
Fun fact
Fast.com uses https by default (as opposed to speedtest), so it is more difficult for ISPs to cheat and cache the results. And it also works right out of the box in a mobile browser.
1.3 Speedof.me
If you are looking for a comprehensive test that uses HTML5 instead of Flash and supports mobile devices, Speedof.me is a good alternative. It checks your bandwidth straight from your browser via HTML 5 instead of third party plugins like Flash. This increases the likelihood that the test will be more accurate. This makes this test more reliable than speedtest.net or fast.com. It is a very lightweight site that runs very smoothly, providing graphical information about your internet speed every second. Apart from this, it also displays the delay time.
2. Speed ​​test through Windows cmd
While speed tests are great for the average user, most power users and slow-connected users prefer ping . The ping command is fast, platform independent and can provide some useful information when used correctly.
What is the ping command?
Ping (Packet Internet Groper) is a popular command line tool for checking network problems. This is built into every OS. Basically, it tells you how long it takes for a “data packet” to go from your computer to the server and back to your computer (think of it as SONAR). The longer it takes, the slower your connection will be.
To test your speed using the ping command, simply open a command prompt and type “ping” followed by a website address such as Google. The most commonly used command is “ping www.google.com†because Google servers very rarely go down. Once you do this, you will see responses coming from the domain that your Internet is working.
Ping times under 50ms are great, and ping times between 50ms and 100ms should be fast enough for fast online games. Anything below 250ms should be fine for web surfing or general use. But if you reach 500ms to 1000ms ping latency, you will definitely notice internet latency. Latency is a measure of whether your network traffic has taken the shortest possible route or not. This way, you can have a fast internet connection, but if the chosen route is longer, you will notice delays while browsing.
If you are running Linux, you can use this CLI to test your internet bandwidth with speedtest.net.
3. Speed ​​test program
For our advanced users who are not satisfied with only the information that Internet speed testing sites provide, we have 2 programs that do their job brilliantly!
3.1 Automatic Speed ​​Tester from JD
JD’s Auto Speed ​​Tester provides a complete list of everyday test results as a bar graph. You can set the cycle time for automatic testing using the software. Using data collected in an hour according to your cycle time, it will show the average hourly internet speed. This allows users to add their test URLs manually or from a predefined list. The test can be performed against a single URL or multiple URLs if you so desire.
3.2 Down Tester
Down Tester is a portable application from nirsoft that does not require installation. While it does not allow users to officially view their URL list, there are workarounds. An additional feature that JD’s Auto Speed ​​Tester lacks is the ability to set the auto test cycle according to the data consumed.
On the subject: Useful NirSoft Utilities Every Windows User Should Try
4. Other ways to test your internet speed
Apart from these sites or command line, you can use
http://ovh.net/files/ or http://www.azurespeed.com/Azure/Download
These sites allow you to download test suites ranging in size from 5 MB to 1 GB. You can find out what speed you will get when downloading larger packages. These tests give more accurate results than speed tests. This is because they simulate real-time usage more accurately than speed tests, which measure internet speed using small packets, which is not the case with real-time usage.
The disadvantage of this method is that if multiple users are connected to the same network, the speed will be shared among the users.
Note. Remember, the results from online speed tests show how well your internet is performing between your computer and the test server. While this is great for getting a general idea of ​​the speeds you get on the network, these speeds can change as you test from different servers.
- The advertised internet speed (e.g. 10 Mbps) is NOT the actual speed you will get when downloading or surfing the internet. This is because the advertised speed is expressed in Mega bits per second, which is 8 times the actual speed of the Internet (measured in Mega bytes per second, MB / s). This is an example of false advertising to attract customers.
- The speed of the ISP depends on the speed of the server (since the Internet is the final connection, communication takes place from both the client and the server side). If the server is not fast enough or is down, this does not mean that you are having problems connecting to the Internet.
- Some ISPs offer speeds much faster than you pay on certain sites, especially all Google sites and apps. This is due to Google peering, in which Google allows the ISP to access its services at a much higher speed than other sites.
Some common myths and facts related to internet speed
Conclusion: Test your internet speed
The only way to be sure of this is to use different websites to test the speed, or even download a test file from ovh.net (link above) or download a video from YouTube. This will give you a pretty good idea of ​​your actual download speed.
What method do you use to check your internet speed? Have we missed any great internet speed testing sites? Let us know in the comments below.
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