Is your internet provider delivering the internet speed you’re paying for? Is there a reason you think they’re not? You don’t have to just take your internet provider’s word for it, you can test your internet speeds. Testing your internet speeds is free and it’s simple to do. If you’ve never sought out an internet speed test, don’t worry. We will walk you through where to find one and how to get the most accurate results.
Before You Start Testing Your Internet Speeds
It’s important that you do a few things first before you start running your internet speed test to get a more accurate reading. You’ll need to turn off and not just pause any downloads or uploads you have going on. If you use a VPN, you’ll have to turn that off too just during the test. You want to test your internet speeds in normal conditions without heavy usage or your test results will be heavily skewed.
Internet Speed Testing Sites
You can test your speed nearly anywhere online, but the most reliable sites are your internet provider and popular third party speed tests from Ookla, Netflix and PCMag.
Speed checkers all do the same thing, test your speed, but each one has its own merits. For example with Ookla you can create an account and it’ll save all of your test results or you can choose what server your test runs off of. Of course it still works without an account; you just don’t get the added perks. With Netflix’s internet speed checker, it automatically starts testing for you from the moment you open the site.
Interpreting Your Speed Test Results
Once you complete your speed test, it’ll tell you two things: your download speeds and your upload speeds. The only for sure way to know if you’re getting the right speeds is to check with your internet provider and find out what you’re paying for. If there’s a huge discrepancy between your test results and what you’re paying for, something is wrong. You should troubleshoot the best you can on your own and with your internet provider to get to the bottom of why your speeds are so poor so you can experience what you’re paying for.
Test Your Internet Speeds Again
Your speed test results are accurate in that exact moment you run the test. However, to get a full understanding of your internet speeds is to run multiple tests at different times. Ideally you’ll want to run your test on different devices, in different rooms, and in different times of the day. It sounds like a lot of tests to run, but they’re all important. For example, your internet speeds will be faster if you’re running the test with one device versus many devices connected to your Wi-Fi or simply during the day versus primetime.
We recommend that you start your speed tests while connected to your modem via the ethernet cord. This will provide you the closest internet speeds you’re receiving from your internet provider. Next we recommend running a few tests off your Wi-Fi in different rooms. For the purpose of troubleshooting with your internet provider, they only care about the results from your modem via ethernet cable. This doesn’t mean forgo testing on Wi-Fi completely though. Testing on Wi-Fi is still important because if you find a discrepancy between your speeds from the modem via ethernet cable versus your Wi-Fi, it can be an issue with your wireless network, not your internet provider. Unfortunately an internet provider can only help so much if at all if the poor speed results is indeed from your router.