This is the most complete list with facts regarding speed tests
- A speed test measures the bandwidth of the weakest link between your device and the speed test server
- To measure the bandwidth of the ISP, the home network must be able to easily handle the expected bandwidth
- Typically, a real-world speed test measures the bandwidth of the home network, not the bandwidth provided by the ISP
- Low and highly variable test results are a sign that your home network is the bottleneck
- When your wired network is the bottleneck, Google Fiber and Xfinity xFi Speed Test measure a much lower download speed as expected
- When your Wi-Fi network is the bottleneck, with Google Fiber and Cloudflare measure 90% (or less) of the expected download speed
- A real-world speed test is only negatively affected by two things, namely Wi-Fi issues and large downloads
- Large downloads have a huge negative impact on a speed test, so it is often recommended to test on an updated system as the sole user
- It is best to run a speed test with a wired network to rule out Wi-Fi issues
- The max theoretical download speed with Wi-Fi g is 31.4 Mbps
- In practice the max download speed with Wi-Fi g is 28.9 Mbps
- Website developers might throttle the download speed of a browser to test their website behavior when lower speeds are available
- Testing speed tests with a throtteld browser is a bad idea
- Six speed tests respect the throtteld speed more or less correct
- There are six characteristics of an excellent speed test
- An excellent speed test is accurate-and-consistent, free to use, easy to use, privacy friendly, informative and fast
- Internet Speed at a Glance is by far the most accessible speed test
- All speed tests works fine in the incognito mode
- All modern speed test need JavaScript
- The original Google Fiber speed test is the best speed test there is, according to the following tests: 2022 (details) and 2020 (details)
- The second best speed test is M-Lab
- For most speeds (tested up to 200 Mbps) M-Lab is a very accurate speed test
- M-Lab is more accurate than Google Fiber
- When you Google speedtest you get the suggestion to perform a M-Lab based speed test
- Bing gives you the option when you search for speed test to perform an Ookla based speed test
- The diferences between Google and Bing are negligibly small when you search for "speed test"
- A 30 second knockout criterion is fatal for most speed tests, including Ookla's Speedtest and Fast
- Most speed tests use a fixed time for a speed test (hence the amount of data used is variable)
- The Ookla Speedtest is used or recommend by the majority of ISP's
- Google Fiber Help recommends the Ookla Speedtest too
- The exact worldwide number of ISP's is unknown
- A fairly safe assumption is that there are 5,000 to 10,000 unique ISPs worldwide
- There are probably thousends of custom speed tests
- There are circa 25 unique speed tests
- It is no coincidence that different speed tests give different results, they are programmed that way for a reason
- Speed tests can be divided into the main categories realistic, mainstream and conservative
- Besides the main categories you also have the categories ambiguous and miscellaneous
- A mainstream speed test yields more or less the advertised speed
- In practice, the true internet speed is 12% higher than advertised
- A realistic speed test yields more or less the true internet speed
- A conservative speed test is often developed with the business goal in mind
- The standard deviation of a speed test depends on the speed test used
- A certain standard deviation is unavoidable because the speed measurement is based on the internet protocol
- For most people, a mainstream speed test like Google Fiber is enough
- There is no recommended speed test to test your true internet speed
- The best speed test to test your true internet speed is (up to 100 Mbps) SpeedOf.me, however SpeedOf.me takes a long time to complete
- There are 7 speed tests that support dark mode theme
- Speed test loads a lot of data to measure your download speed
- Speed tests are one of the most used tools at the internet
- Ookla claims to have over 10 million users per day
- Speed tests contribute significantly to global CO2 emissions
- There is probably a simple rule of thumb for determining the carbon footprint of a speed test
- The carbon footprint in grams of CO2 is the amount of data needed (in MB) divided by 2.5
- Internet Speed at a Glance is by far the fastest, and most climate-friendly, speed test there is
- Internet Speed at a Glance is also by far the most accessible speed test there is
- Cloudflare and Internet Speed at a Glance are the most privacy-friendly speed tests