Testing Your Broadband Speed

You can use various websites and apps to test your home broadband speed. Compare that to the speed you are supposed to be receiving from your provider and call them if you see a problem. You may be able to get better speeds without spending anything extra.

Comments: 18 Responses to “Testing Your Broadband Speed”

    Richard Fuhr
    9 years ago

    There is also a data item called "ping" that appears as a result on some of the speed tests. For this item, lower means faster.

      Sponge Bob
      9 years ago

      also read up on how trace route (traceroute on a lunix/mac system, tracert on windows) works, or even play with MTR (Matt's trace route - a great tool). If you're getting slow speeds to sites, traceroute and ping are great tool start troubleshooting with, assuming the site allows them. If you see "* * * *" in a trace route result, it does not necessarily mean there's an issue. It may mean that a router a long the way, or the destination is blocking traceroute. The same can be said of ping.

    Phil Wozniak
    9 years ago

    I doubt that anyone is getting the speed that they pay for.

      jj william
      9 years ago

      actually, i signed up for dish network's satellite broadband, they guaranteed me 10 Mbits/sec, and i've consistently gotten 18-25Mbits/sec all the years i've been with them. 10 thumbs up, if i had 10 thumbs.

      Tamara
      9 years ago

      In cases that's true but do you mean it in a negative. I'm wireless now on my iMac get these results consistently.
      PING 39 ms DOWNLOAD 129.40 Mbps
      UPLOAD 4.06 Mbps
      A lot of people setup and configure their networks but don't pay attention to what connects to their networks. You can unintentionally slow down what the speedtest results show, connecting slower stuff to your router like a 802.11 n device on a 802.11ac router slows the throughput to everything else on your network.

    Bob Haar
    9 years ago

    Speak Easy is not MegaPath. And the speed test requires Flash - big FAIL!

      9 years ago

      Why is "requires Flash" a "big fail?" This is the sort of thing Flash is good at -- complex apps on a web page.

        LB
        9 years ago

        It's a fail because you can't check your wireless speed on an iPad or iPhone.

          9 years ago

          Valid point. Apple doesn't allow any type of web-based integrated app on iOS (Flash, Shockwave, Java, other plug-ins). The solution for this and many other things is to use an app. There are many speed test apps in the store, usually free.

          Tamara
          9 years ago

          Why not just download the Speedtest app to test it, it's app based which rules out Flash being an issue on an iOS device?

    Mac Carter
    9 years ago

    Does anyone why speed tests vary so much from site to site AND between cities? I get wide variations, particularly for Download speed. Here are Download speed results from 4 cities at OOKLA & Speakeasy today:

    OOKLA: 46.74, 60.45, 62.13, 56.09 (more consistent)
    Speakeasy: 27.08, 52.46, 24.09, 69.46 (much less consistent)

      9 years ago

      Think of Internet connections like you would roads and highways. Two points could both be 500 miles from your house but different types of roads, speeds, traffic lights, congestion, weather, and so on would lead to different travel times. The same with the Internet. You are passing through different lines, routers, servers, etc. Even using the exact same route, something could vary like your neighbor starting a Netflix movie or that website suddenly being hit with many requests.

        Stuart J Walton
        9 years ago

        Thanks for the most succinct answer I've ever seen to address the issue of internet speeds!

    Squafdonoboles
    9 years ago

    My connection is being reset every 30 seconds. According to my ISP, it's my browser. However I have five browsers and it happens on every one.

      9 years ago

      Not sure what you mean by "reset." Doesn't sound like something a browser would do. Sounds like a problem with your modem/router.

        Squafdonoboles
        9 years ago

        Modem was recently changed. Should have kept the old one.

    Sponge Bob
    9 years ago

    Don't take the results as gospel - for two reasons: 1) ISPs are known to proxy speedtest servers, so you're only testing your ISP's server, not to the destinationm and 2) (or 1a), you're only testing the speed of the service between your PC to the egress point of your ISP - so take any reported speeds to o/s servers with a grain of salt. A better speed test would be to use ftp (from the command prompt) to download (and upload if possible) a file (say 100mb in size) to your ISP's ftp server.

      Tamara
      9 years ago

      Which is why the first thing you should be doing when you get any computer is changing your proxy settings and DNS settings. The last time my provider gave me a gateway, I put it in modem only mode and used my own router for my network, that's getting closer to letting go of any hold backs your provider can throw on your service.

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