The M-Lab speed test

https://speed.measurementlab.net/ The M-Lab speed test 0 5/5 stars ★★★★★ Hans van der Graaf Tip

The M-Lab speed test is a highly recommended speed test. M-Lab is an very accurate and independent speed test.

 

With an adverstised speed of 100 Mbps and an average measured internet speed of 100.7 Mbps, we conclude that the M-Lab speed test is a very accurate speed test (Accuracy score: 100/100).

The M-Lab speed test is a mainstream speed test. That is, this speed test measures the advertised speed.

M-Lab was founded by New America’s Open Technology Institute, the PlanetLab Consortium, Google, and a group of academic researchers.

Nowadays M-Lab is a fiscally sponsored open source project of Code for Science and Society .

The M-Lab speed test, although often referenced to as the Measurement Lab speed test, became available in January 2009.

The homepage of the M-Lab speed test The M-Lab speed test has a unique color scheme. There is made use of the HTML5 UP template Hyperspace.

Note that in 2024, M-Lab tested two different methods for their speed test, namely NDT and MSAK.

M-Lab was the number 2 speed test in the ultimate speed test test 2022 (number 1 was Google Fiber).

M-Lab considers their speed test as a Network Diagnostic Tool (NDT). The way M-Lab's NDT works has evolved over time.

Open source project

As stated at the about page: (...) M-Lab is an open source project with contributors from civil society organizations, educational institutions, and private sector companies (...) M-Lab aims to advance Internet research by empowering consumers with useful information about their Internet performance (...)

Based on M-Lab's NDT7 GitHub page, we have created this example.

Google is a founding member of M-Lab and still supports it, hence it isn't that strange the when you Google speed test, you get the option to start the M-Lab speed test directly.

Google's first result when you Google for 'speed test'

It is striking that the two best speed tests according to the ultimate speed test test (Google Fiber and M-Lab) are related to Google. Well done Google.

The M-Lab speed test is an original speed test.

Pros

This M-Lab speed test has the following pros:

  1. It is very accurate
  2. It is ad-free

Cons

This M-Lab speed test has the following cons:

  1. You must agree to have your IP address stored for research purposes

When to use M-Lab

M-Lab is a highly recommended excellent and very accurate speed test. If you want to know your internet speed with great accuracy, then M-Lab is the speed test to use.

How we tested

We have tested the M-Lab speed test in a standardized way. This makes speed tests easy to compare.

Note that this test is based on double test results (NDT and MSAK). When M-Lab has gone back to one test, we will test M-Lab again.

The following results form the basis for this speed test review:

  1. Abort/pause possible: no
  2. Ad-free: yes
  3. Average download speed of 3 measurements: 100.7 Mbps
  4. Clear indication of the current focus: no
  5. Correct back button behavior: yes
  6. Flesch Reading Ease score of the privacy policy: 40.02
  7. Number of ACheckers known problems: 2
  8. Number of cookies: 4
  9. Number of measured features: 2
  10. Number of Wave errors: 1
  11. Observatory score: 45
  12. Tingtun score: 80
  13. Total data use of 3 measurements: 501.185 MiBs
  14. Total time to complete 3 tests: 74.1 seconds