The MB's used by a speed test test (at wireless 5 GHz AC)

TL;DR

Testing with a 5 GHz AC WiFi 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 only the 802.11ac standard. The maximum achievable speed is now 500 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: 21.00, 21.00, 21.00. Median: 21.00 - Sum down 171.03 MiB, sum up 5.30 MiB
  2. Bandwidth Place Measurements: 20.72, 20.48, 19.97. Median: 20.48 - Sum down 101.94 MiB, sum up 102.74 MiB
  3. Bredbandskollen Measurements: 21.64, 22.07, 21.97. Median: 21.97 - Sum down 82.59 MiB, sum up 76.52 MiB
  4. Broadband Speed Checker Measurements: 21.41, 21.65, 21.77. Median: 21.65 - Sum down 121.03 MiB, sum up 96.17 MiB
  5. Cloudflare Measurements: 21.9, 22.0, 21.9. Median: 21.9 - Sum down 215.21 MiB, sum up 141.97 MiB
  6. Comparitech Measurements: 23.40, 23.44, 23.47. Median: 23.44 - Sum down 144.83 MiB, sum up 140.67 MiB
  7. DSLReports Measurements: 21.92, 21.16, 22.14. Median: 21.92 - Sum down 109.54 MiB, sum up 171.81 MiB
  8. Fast Measurements: 19, 20, 21. Median: 20 - Sum down 78.80 MiB, sum up 7.45 MiB
  9. Fireprobe Measurements: 21.91, 22.05, 21.68. Median: 21.91 - Sum down 129.41 MiB, sum up 124.95 MiB
  10. Google Fiber Measurements: 21.9, 19.6, 21.0. Median: 21.0 - Sum down 52.09 MiB, sum up 74.60 MiB
  11. Internet Speed at a Glance Measurements: 20..50, 20..50, 20..50. Median: 20..50 - Sum down 101.60 KiB, sum up 28.41 KiB
  12. LibreSpeed Measurements: 23.4, 23.3, 23.2. Median: 23.3 - Sum down 84.46 MiB, sum up 93.80 MiB
  13. Measurement Lab Measurements: 21.73, 21.74, 22.09. Median: 21.74 - Sum down 81.21 MiB, sum up 86.84 MiB
  14. Meter.net Measurements: 17.85, 19.13, 20.38. Median: 19.13 - Sum down 62.52 MiB, sum up 65.91 MiB
  15. N Perf Measurements: 21.68, 22.32, 21.42. Median: 21.68 - Sum down 136.06 MiB, sum up 119.68 MiB
  16. Ookla Speedtest Measurements: 21.69, 21.91, 22.20. Median: 21.91 - Sum down 135.48 MiB, sum up 118.92 MiB
  17. Open Speed Test Measurements: 23.01, 22.73, 23.04. Median: 23.01 - Sum down 134.34 MiB, sum up 104.62 MiB
  18. SamKnows Measurements: 22.2, 22.2, 22.5. Median: 22.2 - Sum down 104.90 MiB, sum up 111.17 MiB
  19. SpeedCheck Measurements: 18.17, 21.1, 21.84. Median: 21.1 - Sum down 186.66 MiB, sum up 78.67 MiB
  20. SpeedOf.me Measurements: 24.12, 23.47, 23.67. Median: 23.67 - Sum down 207.53 MiB, sum up 97.72 MiB
  21. SpeedOf.me API Sample Page Measurements: 24.14, 24.31, 24.19. Median: 24.19 - Sum down 101.43 MiB, sum up 48.55 MiB
  22. SpeedSmart Measurements: 21.73, 21.52, 22.41. Median: 21.73 - Sum down 97.47 MiB, sum up 95.78 MiB
  23. Speedtest4.PHP Measurements: -, -, -. Median: - - Sum down 10.32 MiB, sum up 487.08 KiB
  24. TestMy.net Measurements: 21.8, 22, 21.9. Median: 21.9 - Sum down 61.97 MiB, sum up 3.18 MiB
  25. Toast Measurements: 3.4, 4.3, 6.1. Median: 4.3 - Sum down 69.20 MiB, sum up 2.41 MiB
  26. Which Broadband Checker Measurements: 23, 23, 27. Median: 23 - Sum down 88.58 MiB, sum up 86.43 MiB
  27. Xfinity xFi Speed Test Measurements: 21.8, 21.5, 21.8. Median: 21.8 - Sum down 118.46 MiB, sum up 4.40 MiB
 

Conclusions

Completely contrary to expectations, the measured speed is around 20 Mbps. While it was expected that the maximum speed (100 Mbps) would be measured.

The median of the number of MiBs required per Mbps is 1.7.