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This is the most complete list with facts regarding speed tests

  1. A speed test measures the bandwidth of the weakest link between your device and the speed test server
  2. To measure the bandwidth of the ISP, the home network must be able to easily handle the expected bandwidth
  3. Typically, a real-world speed test measures the bandwidth of the home network, not the bandwidth provided by the ISP
  4. If the RealSpeed speed test works with your router, this is the ideal speed test to find out if your home network is the bottleneck
  5. A real-world speed test is only negatively affected by two things, namely Wi-Fi issues and large downloads
  6. 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
  7. It is best to run a speed test with a wired network to rule out Wi-Fi issues
  8. There are seven characteristics of an excellent speed test
  9. An excellent speed test is accurate-and-consistent, free to use, easy to use, privacy friendly, informative, fast and secure
  10. All speed tests are safe to use
  11. All speed tests works fine in the incognito mode
  12. All modern speed test need JavaScript
  13. Most speed tests use a fixed time for a speed test (hence the amount of data used is variable)
  14. It is no coincidence that different speed tests give different results, they are programmed that way for a reason
  15. Speed tests can be divided into the main categories realistic, mainstream and conservative
  16. Besides the main categories you also have the categories ambiguous and miscellaneous
  17. A mainstream speed test yields more or less the advertised speed
  18. In practice, the true internet speed is 12% higher than advertised
  19. A realistic speed test yields more or less the true internet speed
  20. A conservative speed test is often developed with the business goal in mind
  21. The standard deviation of a speed test depends on the speed test used
  22. A certain standard deviation is unavoidable because the speed measurement is based on the internet protocol
  23. The Ookla Speedtest is used or recommend by the majority of ISP's
  24. The exact worldwide number of ISP's is unknown
  25. A fairly safe assumption is that there are 5,000 to 10,000 unique ISPs worldwide
  26. There are probably thousends of Ookla clones (sorry, we haven't tested them all)
  27. Ookla claims to have over 10 million users per day
  28. Speed tests contribute significantly to global CO2 emissions
  29. There is probably a simple rule of thumb for determining the carbon footprint of a speed test
  30. The carbon footprint in grams of CO2 is the amount of data needed (in MB) divided by 2.5
  31. Ookla's Speedtest is definitely not data efficient
  32. Ookla's Speedtest is certainly not privacy-friendly either
  33. Ookla's Speedtest is accurate (it is the gold standard)