How To Test Your Internet Speed?

Internet speeds make up a large part of how smooth your everyday entertainment, workflows, and communication tasks are. They also determine the price of your internet plan. 

The higher the speeds, the higher the price tag. Due to these reasons, you should be aware of the speeds you are actually getting. There are multiple reasons why your payment and price may not match. 

Some ISPs employ bandwidth throttling— the act of lowering your internet speed during data-intensive usage. Other times the ISP may go through slow internet connections during peak hours or a sudden spike in usage. 

Knowing how to run a speed test is important to ensure that you are getting the speed you pay for. This article explains all the steps, tricks, and rules to test your internet speed with the highest accuracy. 

Testing Through Websites

The easiest way to test your internet speed is with the help of websites or applications dedicated to assessing internet speeds. 

All you have to do is visit a speed test website such as www.speedtest.net. Once you visit, the website will automatically begin calculating your internet speeds. Wait for at least 30 seconds to reach a valid and reliable speed value. 

Rules For Ensuring An Accurate Speed Test

Users face many pitfalls when trying to test their internet speeds. In reality, internet speed can be affected by many factors besides your ISP. 

It’s possible that your slow connection may be due to a disruption, overload, incompatibility, or distance within your own house and not your ISP’s fault. 

To avoid an embarrassing confrontation with your ISP, make sure you remove all the other influencing factors first. Some of these are explained below.

Your Device Location

Your router is responsible for prioritizing the traffic to different devices connected to the internet. By doing this, it divides the internet bandwidth among different users depending on the usage needs of each person. 

You want to test the speed that the ISP delivers and not what a specific device is receiving. To do this, ensure that you stand as close to the router as possible. You can connect the device directly to the modem with a hardwired connection for even better accuracy. 

A Faulty Modem/Router

Sometimes, your modem, router, or combo can slow internet speeds. An overused or damaged modem/router has an impaired ability to efficiently and quickly decode the internet signals received from the ISP and deliver them to different devices in your household. 

Before reaching a final decision about your ISP speed quality, consider testing a different modem, router, or both. If your connection remains slow regardless, you should contact your ISP to demand an improvement. 

Other Devices Usage

Minimize internet usage to ensure that your bandwidth doesn’t get divided among devices during the internet test. 

While you can stop streaming, gaming, and downloading activities for a valid number, it’s better to disconnect every device from the internet. 

This will give you highly accurate numbers that can be confidently forwarded to the ISP in cases of slow speeds. 

Testing Through Apps

Like speed test websites, many mobile apps can be used to test the speed. However, they aren’t as powerful and relevant as most websites. 

These are more suitable for testing the speed between your modem/router and a specific device. This means you will only get a reading for the internet speed the phone with the app installed is receiving. 

It will remain irrelevant for overall bandwidth tests where you want to assess the initial internet quality being delivered by your ISP. Some common options include Wi-Fi Speed Test by Zoltan Pallagi for Android and Wi-Fi SweetSpots for IOS. 

These apps have another irreplaceable benefit; finding the perfect Wi-Fi location. You can carry your phone around different areas of the house and test the speed at each instance. 

While there’s no doubt that the internet is fastest when closest to the source, some other places can also have stronger signals than others. 

Upload Versus. Download Speeds

It’s important to remember that your internet plan will come with different upload and download speeds. Upload speeds are usually 90 percent slower than the download speed. 

Most internet speed tests only highlight the download speed and show it within the center of the overall webpage. 

If you are only running the speed test because you’re facing real-time issues such as delayed video call input, slow backup, or livestreams, you may only need to focus on the upload speed. 

If you let www.speedtest.net run long enough (at least 1-2 minutes), it will eventually reach a more stable reading. This will show you more details about your internet, including the upload speed, upload latency, download latency, idle latency, and ping. 

If the last four keywords don’t make any sense to you, consider reading the section below.

What Is Latency, And Why Does It Matter?

Latency determines how much lag you face as you request different information through your internet. Latency is always present as you browse, stream, and communicate online. 

Most users never face the need to assess their latency issues as they don’t cause sizeable delays during activities. 

However, it becomes a serious issue when real-time input is involved, such as competitive gaming, Livestreaming, or Multiple downloads at once. 

You may also want to check your internet speed with respect to latency if such activities make up a large part of your day. With most cable connections, you should expect a latency of 12-27 milliseconds. 

When paying for high-end internet connections such as Fiber, you shouldn’t expect anything higher than 10-12 milliseconds. 

Conclusion

Testing your internet speed can help you assess the actual quality of the internet and the service of your ISP. It also helps you confront your ISP with more confidence if they place bandwidth throttling on your devices or deliver lower internet speeds than what you paid for. 

The process doesn’t require any signing up or software download but can be performed with just a single click. Apps may be a more appropriate solution for checking the internet speeds at different differences within the house.