Why should I test my internet speed with an internet speed test?

An internet speed test measures the connection speed and quality of your connected device to the internet. It does so by running multiple consecutive tests that analyze different aspects of your internet connection, namely ping (latency), download speed, and upload speed. Each of these values represents the connection's specific qualities, which you can read more about in the paragraph after the next. These should help you understand the final speed test results. But before we get to these, we first want to discuss how to perform each test.

Speed Test Online

Running a WiFi Speed Test is the right solution for most people if they encounter connectivity issues as they are usually internet speed related. The reason is simple. Most of the devices on your home network today are not connected with a wired connection anymore. They are all connected via WiFi. So to figure out if your connectivity issues are due to your ISP, your wireless connection or a local router issue running a WiFi Test will give you the insights you're looking for. Just run multiple tests, one close to your WiFi Hotspot and one in the place where you're having issues because the signal strength diminishes. If the internet speeds are the same for the weak and strong signal, it's likely an ISP issue. If the interet speeds differ on your connected devices, however, the poor connectivity is likely either due to a local misconfiguration or device capabilities. Maybe your device is not connecting to the correct WiFi hotspot, so it must go through a thick wall. Selectively enabling and disabling your WiFi hotspots can quickly help identify the problematic device. You can run a WiFi speed test on all your devices to idenitify the ones that have a strong WiFi signal and the ones that don't. In addition you could check internet speed with a network speed test as well to compare wireless and wired connectivity.

Test my internet speed?

To learn more about the specific requirements of the bandwidth speed test, we've prepared the sections below that will explain the details of what actually happening during the speedtest.

How to test download speed?

To speed test internet performance for downloading data the test is performed by opening multiple connections to a server and simultaneously starting the download of a large data file on all connections. This approach ensures that the entire bandwidth of the internet connection is maxed out, and thereby the maximum data throughput can be measured. Recording the data throughput against measurement time finally yields the available internet speed for downloading data.

How to test upload speed?

Upload speed is tested by reversing the sequence of the download analysis. Again multiple connections are opened to the test server. Instead of downloading a file, a large file of random data is created on your device and pushed through all connections to the server. Pushing the data to the server over the network via multiple streams ensures that the maximum throughput is measured. Again, recording the data throughput against time yields the available internet speed for uploading data.

How to test ping?

During the ping test, the device sends a small data package over the network to the test server on the internet. This test doesn't focus on upload speeds but on response time. When the server receives this package, it will send it back to the device, completing the roundtrip. The time it takes the data package to complete the roundtrip is called latency, also known as ping. To achieve an accurate reading, multiple ping tests are conducted consecutively, with the final result being the average of all these tests.

All these are automatically handled for you when you use Speedcheck to test internet speed. But you should take one crucial aspect into account to test speed accurately. Choose the right tool. This depends on the device you want to use, being a phone or tablet, or a computer. To check internet speed on a computer, use your browser and the app on this website. To achieve accurate results on mobile devices, you should download our iOS or Android app, respectively. This is especially important when running a WiFi speed test. Because browsers on mobile devices have poor performance, we suggest using a mobile app written in native code to ensure the most accurate test results.