The MB's used by a speed test test (at wireless B)

TL;DR

In practice the maximum speed of 11 Mbps when using WiFi-b is never reached.

It is not to say what the correct speed is. Hence almost all speed tests are fine.

TestMy.net uses the least data. Probably because we were able to only test the download speed.

 

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 ICIDU NI-707539) is configured to support only the 802.11b standard. The maximum achievable speed is now 11 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: 3.00, 4.00, 4.00. Median: 4.00 - Sum down 40.12 MiB, sum up 1.26 MiB
  2. Bandwidth Place Measurements: 2.31, 3.54, 3.77. Median: 3.54 - Sum down 25.28 MiB, sum up 28.32 MiB
  3. Bredbandskollen Measurements: 3.55, 3.84, 3.80. Median: 3.80 - Sum down 15.09 MiB, sum up 15.53 MiB
  4. Broadband Speed Checker Measurements: 3.58, 3.20, 3.16. Median: 3.20 - Sum down 37.43 MiB, sum up 16.72 MiB
  5. Cloudflare Measurements: 4.20, 4.44, 4.36. Median: 4.36 - Sum down 32.58 MiB, sum up 21.90 MiB
  6. Comparitech Measurements: 4.70, 4.55, 4.67. Median: 4.67 - Sum down 31.37 MiB, sum up 26.07 MiB
  7. DSLReports Measurements: 3.09, 4.00, 4.28. Median: 4.00 - Sum down 21.26 MiB, sum up 30.27 MiB, Note Public WiFi is selected as option
  8. Fast Measurements: 3.9, 4.2, 3.3. Median: 3.9 - Sum down 27.13 MiB, sum up 4.56 MiB
  9. Fireprobe Measurements: 3.96, 4.08, 4.03. Median: 4.03 - Sum down 25.24 MiB, sum up 22.12 MiB
  10. Google Fiber Measurements: 4.25, 3.32, 4.63. Median: 4.25 - Sum down 14.08 MiB, sum up 16.87 MiB
  11. Internet Speed at a Glance Measurements: 10..20, 10..20, 5..10. Median: 10..20 - Sum down 104.77 KiB, sum up 28.23 KiB
  12. LibreSpeed Measurements: 4.10, 3.62, 4.29. Median: 4.10 - Sum down 27.08 MiB, sum up 23.38 MiB
  13. M-Lab Measurements: 4.39, 4.42, 4.24. Median: 4.39 - Sum down 16.92 MiB, sum up 14.18 MiB
  14. Meter.net Measurements: 4.11, 3.74, 4.05. Median: 4.05 - Sum down 40.70 MiB, sum up 15.26 MiB
  15. N Perf Measurements: -, -, -. Median: - - Sum down - MiB, sum up - MiB, No results. Keeps Waiting for close...
  16. Ookla Speedtest Measurements: 3.98, 4.12, 4.11. Median: 4.11 - Sum down 35.09 MiB, sum up 22.79 MiB
  17. Open Speed Test Measurements: 4.68, 4.64, 4.47. Median: 4.64 - Sum down 32.23 MiB, sum up 22.22 MiB
  18. SamKnows Measurements: 4.79, 4.65, 4.63. Median: 4.63 - Sum down 27.63 MiB, sum up 30.78 MiB
  19. SpeedCheck Measurements: 3.98, 3.36, 3.97. Median: 3.97 - Sum down 50.84 MiB, sum up 9.96 MiB
  20. SpeedOf.me Measurements: 4.58, 4.58, 4.82. Median: 4.58 - Sum down 37.72 MiB, sum up 17.02 MiB
  21. SpeedOf.me API Sample Page Measurements: 4.47, 4.66, 4.69. Median: 4.66 - Sum down 20.93 MiB, sum up 10.22 MiB
  22. SpeedSmart Measurements: 4.36, 4.43, 4.46. Median: 4.43 - Sum down 21.27 MiB, sum up 20.44 MiB
  23. Speedtest4.PHP Measurements: -, -, -. Median: - - Sum down 10.32 MiB, sum up 501.13 KiB, No meaningful results
  24. TestMy.net Measurements: 4.1, 3.7, 3.9. Median: 3.9 - Sum down 13.27 MiB, sum up 1.59 MiB
  25. Toast Measurements: 2.9, 3.5, 3.6. Median: 3.5 - Sum down 69.22 MiB, sum up 2.39 MiB
  26. Which Broadband Checker Measurements: 8, 10, 8. Median: 8 - Sum down 21.39 MiB, sum up 17.36 MiB
  27. Xfinity xFi Speed Test Measurements: 4.3, 4.5, 4.5. Median: 4.5 - Sum down 28.31 MiB, sum up 1.05 MiB
 

Conclusions

Based on these measurements it is hard to state what the "advertised" and "true" internet speed should be. The margins as mentioned at What makes a speed test excellent? are not usable now.

Speed test results when testing with WiFi b

When we ignore the 8 Mbps of Which Broadband Checker, the median of is 4.1 Mbps and the average download speed is 4.14 Mbps.

Lets say that all results between the 3.8 and 4.7 Mbps are fine, then almost every speed test is useful at this speed.

With 5 MiB per test TestMy.net uses the least data of these speed tests. Followed by Bredbandskollen, Fast, Google Fiber, M-Lab, SpeedOf.me API Sample Page and Xfinity xFi Speed Test. These speed tests use roughly 10 MiB per test.

The median of the number of MiBs required per Mbps is 2.2.