The MB's used by a speed test test (at wireless 2.4 GHz B+G+N)

TL;DR

Testing with a Wifi B+G+N router does not give reliable results.

 

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Method of measurement
  3. Speed tests to test
  4. The measurements
  5. Conclusions
 

Introduction

For this test we want to know how much data a speed test uses. It is obvious that this depends on the speed test used and the advertised download speed. For this test, the WiFi router (an Edimax BR-6208AC) is configured to support 802.11b standard, 802.11g standard and 802.11n standard. The maximum achievable speed is now 72 Mbps.

 

Method of measurement

The amount of data used by a speed test is measured with the live option of vnstat.

Initially the webpage with the speed tests to test is opened in the Edge browser. Then the data monitoring is started with vnstat -l and the to be tested speed test is opened in a new tab. After three times testing the internet speed, vnstat is stopped with control-C.

The measured download speeds and the median are noted. These are all in mega bits per seconds. The data used as measured by vnstat is in mebibytes (MiB) (or kibibytes (KiB)).

 

Speed tests to test

Because this is a relative simple test, the unique speed tests as collected at ZOMDir will be tested.

 

The measurements

The following has been measured. Note that all speeds are measured in Mbps.

  1. Astound Measurements: 15.00, 19.00, 18.00. Median: 18.00 - Sum down 141.52 MiB, sum up 2.65 MiB
  2. Bandwidth Place Measurements: 19.34, 19.35, 18.59. Median: 19.34 - Sum down 70.79 MiB, sum up 142.47 MiB
  3. Bredbandskollen Measurements: 25.75, 24.68, 26.04. Median: 25.75 - Sum down 96.89 MiB, sum up 113.13 MiB
  4. Broadband Speed Checker Measurements: 85.05, 87.60, 87.14. Median: 87.14 - Sum down 409.47 MiB, sum up 144.23 MiB
  5. Cloudflare Measurements: 83.8, 85.1, 81.4. Median: 83.8 - Sum down 414.68 MiB, sum up 130.17 MiB
  6. Comparitech Measurements: 93.37, 90.78, 93.26. Median: 93.26 - Sum down 546.34 MiB, sum up 200.90 MiB
  7. DSLReports Measurements: 22.08, 19.94, 19.09. Median: 19.94 - Sum down 116.61 MiB, sum up 214.40 MiB
  8. Fast Measurements: 45, 44, 43. Median: 44 - Sum down 128.22 MiB, sum up 10.38 MiB
  9. Fireprobe Measurements: 27.98, 27.95, 28.42. Median: 27.98 - Sum down 159.83 MiB, sum up 158.24 MiB
  10. Google Fiber Measurements: 28.0, 25.0, 28.5. Median: 28.0 - Sum down 64.97 MiB, sum up 81.13 MiB
  11. Internet Speed at a Glance Measurements: 50..100, 50..100, 50..100. Median: 50..100 - Sum down 104.12 KiB, sum up 24.10 KiB
  12. LibreSpeed Measurements: 27.6, 27.8, 27.8. Median: 27.8 - Sum down 89.57 MiB, sum up 112.00 MiB
  13. Measurement Lab Measurements: 84.16, 82.88, 85.21. Median: 84.16 - Sum down 307.46 MiB, sum up 108.81 MiB
  14. Meter.net Measurements: 36.76, 33.04, 26.65. Median: 33.04 - Sum down 81.63 MiB, sum up 86.30 MiB
  15. N Perf Measurements: 62.51, 60.38, 63.17. Median: 62.51 - Sum down 347.17 MiB, sum up 192.73 MiB
  16. Ookla Speedtest Measurements: 91.12, 91.13, 91.19. Median: 91.13 - Sum down 512.37 MiB, sum up 178.56 MiB
  17. Open Speed Test Measurements: 77.13, 82.02, 78.30. Median: 78.30 - Sum down 443.92 MiB, sum up 143.32 MiB
  18. SamKnows Measurements: 62.3, 64.7, 65.4. Median: 64.7 - Sum down 287.36 MiB, sum up 191.03 MiB
  19. SpeedCheck Measurements: 24.35, 25.45, 24.88. Median: 24.88 - Sum down 199.77 MiB, sum up 122.00 MiB
  20. SpeedOf.me Measurements: 22.4, 22, 22.02. Median: 22.02 - Sum down 207.58 MiB, sum up 93.92 MiB
  21. SpeedOf.me API Sample Page Measurements: 22.33, 21.1, 21.49. Median: 21.49 - Sum down 101.39 MiB, sum up 46.46 MiB
  22. SpeedSmart Measurements: 91.09, 92.85, 91.84. Median: 91.84 - Sum down 401.11 MiB, sum up 134.44 MiB
  23. Speedtest4.PHP Measurements: -, -, -. Median: - - Sum down 10.35 MiB, sum up 306.16 KiB
  24. TestMy.net Measurements: 87.3, 85.3, 83.5. Median: 85.3 - Sum down 284.12 MiB, sum up 3.83 MiB
  25. Toast Measurements: 1.9, 1.6, 1.8. Median: 1.8 - Sum down 69.21 MiB, sum up 1.55 MiB
  26. Which Broadband Checker Measurements: 32, 34, 32. Median: 32 - Sum down 105.56 MiB, sum up 118.40 MiB
  27. Xfinity xFi Speed Test Measurements: 17.3, 16.9, 16.9. Median: 16.9 - Sum down 87.22 MiB, sum up 2.04 MiB
 

Conclusions

WiFi-N seems to give always inconsistent results. The results of this test are similar to the MB's used by a speed test test (at wireless N).

Again, these results makes it impractical to indicate which speed test is best.

The median of the number of MiBs required per Mbps is 1.6.