The speed test of Measurement Lab's speed test or short M-Lab is a which first tests your upload speed, followed by your download speed.
Free to use
Measurement Lab is free, there are no ads so the speed test earns 1 point.
Easy to use
Measurement Lab's speed test didn't pass the WCAG 2.0 Level A test.
Before you start the speed test you have to accept the data policy, so 2 clicks are needed to start the test, so 0 points are earned.
Accuracy and consistency
Tested with a clean version of Chromium, throtteld at 30Mbps (Wi-Fi) something strange happens. The downloadspeed measuered is roughly 51Mbps, that is downloadspeed expected when there is no throttling.
It is clear that M-Lab doesn't work fine with a throtteld Chromium browser.
Tested with a clean version of Firefox, throtteld at 30Mbps (Wi-Fi) the following measurements are done. the downloadspeed measuerd is again roughly 51Mbps.
So, M-Lab also doesn't work with a throtteld Firefox browser.
Second change
Based on the results of other speed tests with a throtteld browser, it is decided to perform the following test for M-lab's speed test.
A test in the wild
Tested with Firefox the following measurements are done.
Test Server: Amsterdam, NL
- 50.75Mbps (22 seconds)
- 50.75Mbps (21 seconds)
- 50.76Mbps (21 seconds)
- 49.22Mbps (21 seconds)
- 50.78Mbps (21 seconds)
That gives an average of 50.5Mbps and a standard deviation of 0.69Mbps for the downloadspeed.