Getting accurate test results depends on what you intend to measure. It's fine if you just want to brag about how great your ISP is (that's the idea), but it's bad for getting an idea of your real-world speeds. That means you'll get a faster result than you might with a Netflix or Google speed test. Their tests are optimized for ideal conditions, using servers close to you that are often maintained on the same ISP network you're testing from.

However, you probably shouldn't rely on an ISP-generated speed test. Your ISP might also offer a speed test, like Comcast, Spectrum, or AT&T. The difference in server locations is why you likely see different speed results when trying different tests, like Ookla's, Netflix's, or Google's. In that scenario, your results may reflect a faster performance than your real-world usage. So, while your speed test may show incredibly fast streams, you might find that downloading a program is very slow if the server hosting the data is far away. Much of it is on computers far away-sometimes across the country or in another country. The speed limit hasn't changed, but more cars can pass through the same space at a faster rate thus, the 50th car will arrive sooner using a four-lane highway than it would on a two-lane.īut the entire internet isn't close to you.

Opening additional connections is like adding more lanes to the highway. Imagine your internet service as a highway with a speed limit. The general idea is to tax your internet connection and see how much it can do simultaneously. If the client detects you have room to spare, it opens more connections to the server and downloads more data. At this point, two things are measured: how long it took to grab the fragment of data, and how much of your network resources it used. The client opens multiple connections to the server and attempts to download a small piece of data. The test measures that roundtrip in milliseconds.Īfter the ping is complete, the download test begins. With the test server in place, the Speed Test sends a simple signal (a ping) to the server, and it responds. Some versions, like Ookla's, have an option to change the server. First, the client determines your location and the closest test server to you-this part is important. When you start a speed test, multiple things occur.

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