To calculate your connect speed we need to send a large amount of data to your computer. Your computer has already started. When it’s done, the results will be displayed in the box above and in the Speed Test Thermometer below.

Questions & Answers:

How does this page calculate my connection speed?

Why do I get different speed results each time I run the Bandwidth Speed Test?

I thought my Internet connection was faster. Why does the Speed Test come up with a lower figure?

Could my Internet Service Provider (ISP) be the cause of my slow down?

I have a 56K modem. Why isn’t my download speed even close to 56K?

How does this page calculate my connection speed?

Actually, this isn’t just one Web page, it’s two Web pages, each with a hidden data file in the header area of the page. When either of these pages loads, it notes the time just before and just after the data file loads, then uses this information and the size of the data file to calculate the rate at which the data arrived at your computer.

When the first of these two pages was loaded, it did a rough calculation using a small data file to provide an estimate of how long it will take the second page, with its much larger data file, to download. The second page, with its larger data file, allowed the second page to calculate more accurate figures for the Your Line Speed: box and Speed Test Thermometer above.

Why do I get different speed results each time I run The Bandwidth Speed Test?

Like any major highway system, the Internet information highway has many roadways and interchanges, each with their own capacity and speed limit, and, like highways for cars, sometimes you get traffic delays. Just as you have to wait in a your car while other traffic goes through at a traffic light, data sent to your computer has to wait while other data passes through routers, the Internet equivalent of an intersection, on it’s way to you.

You are more likely to run into slow Internet traffic during peak use hours than those times when fewer people are online, such as after 11 p.m. and before 7 a.m. When this page was being tested, I found that the results on my 144Kbps DSL line results varied from a consistent 120 to 135Kbps mid-morning and afternoon, all the way down to 64Kbps during evening peak-use hours. If you really want to find out what your best possible Bandwidth Speed Test result is, try loading this page at 3:00am on a weeknight, when almost everyone is asleep when Internet use is at it’s lowest. (Friday and Saturday nights are not a good choice.)

I thought my Internet connection was supposed to be faster. Why does the Speed Test come up with a lower figure?

No Internet connection ever performs at 100%. When we test loaded this page direct from our test Web server across a two computer 10Mbps local area network (LAN), our best result was 6.6Mbps (6667Kbps). There is always some loss, and the faster your connection is, the greater that loss is going to be.

Next, this page can only measure the time it takes the applications data–the actual data file–to reach your browser. Wrapped around that data is some overhead that can range from 2 percent to 25 percent of the total data sent. There’s no way for the program built into this Web page to control or discover exactly how much overhead was used to send the page’s internal data file, but generally the percentage is small, and this page adjusts its figures up by 2 percent to compensate. Nevertheless, the actual overhead may be higher than expected, resulting in a depressed value for the Kbps figure.

Also remember that your connection to your ISP is just one part of the system that gets data to your computer. Between your computer and the server that sent this Web page there are probably a dozen or more routers, communications links, and other network components this page had to travel through. Each of these components have a set capacity and speed at which they can operate, and most of them handle network traffic for thousands, even millions of computers every day. The inevitable result is that all Internet traffic encounters some sort of delay as it transits across The Net, and that reduces the amount of data that gets funneled into your connection in the first place.

I’m getting a big slowdown. Could my Internet Service Provider (ISP) be the cause of my problem?

Perhaps.

The delay could be at your ISP, or it could be elsewhere. (See the explanation above, but if you’re consistently getting Bandwidth Speed Test results that are substantially below expectations, the root problem is most likely your ISP’s fault.

While your dial-up modem, DSL, ISDN or other Internet connection may be a dedicated line, all of an ISP’s connections get combined into one or more shared connections. In most cases, these shared connections have less capacity than the combined total of all the customer connections they serve. Done judiciously, this works better than you probably think. Since most Internet users spend more time reading their email and Web pages than they do downloading them, they’re only using a fraction of their connection’s actual capacity. Overbooking allows an ISP to combine several customer connections into a single link that’s smaller (and less expensive) than the combined total of all the connections they serve, without reducing the amount of data sent to a customer when they are downloading data.

The problem is that some ISPs, cable modem companies, and DSL providers take the overbooking concept too far. They funnel so many connections into a small combined connection that normal customer demand overwhelms the capacity of the combined connection. This is a particular problem during peak use hours, when line speeds can slow to a crawl.

Unfortunately, there is no remedy for this problem. As competition in the high-bandwidth Internet connection business heats up, you’ll have more options and your ISP will have more incentive to maintain more reasonable overbooking ratios. Until that time, however, your only options are to complain to your ISP or switch to another Internet provider with a better track record.

I have a 56K modem. Why isn’t my download speed even close to 56K?

There could be several reasons–and most of them aren’t your ISP’s fault.

First of all, static electricity caused by radio signals, power lines, and other sources interfere with most 56K modem signals, forcing them to fall back to 42-50Kbps.

56K modems also require a clean, straight through telephone connection to the telephone company’s central office switching center. Phone company line amplifiers that boost a telephone signal over a long distance, PBX switchboard systems, and other phone equipment alter the phone signal and force 56K modems to fall back to speeds of 33.6Kbps and lower.

Finally, the FCC doesn’t allow 56K modems to use the full range of signals that phone company equipment can generate. They’re concerned that it’ll cause static interference to other phone lines.

So no 56K modem in the United States ever connects at 56K. Most 56K modem users seem to connect at speeds of 44-48Kbps.

(C) Copyright 1999 by Peter John Harrison. All rights reserved. No part of this publication (text or graphics) may be reproduced or distributed by any means (electronic, photocopying, or otherwise) without the prior written consent of the author. All brand names and product names mentioned in this document are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders.

Raw Data:

If you’re just dying to see the raw data used to calculate your download speed, here it is:

* download start time: 1167092081312

* download end time: 1167092081937

* download time: 0.625

* download size in thousands of bytes: 50

* estimated line speed (K bits per second): 652.8

* estimated line speed (K bytes per second): 80

1. What is jitter?

Jitter is the variation in time between packets sent and packets arriving caused by network difficulties such as route changes, congestion, packet loss, traffic regulators etc., and plays a major role in the quality of a VoIP call. VoIP works by sending voice data as a stream of packets from source to destination. These packets can take a varying amount of time to reach the destination and invariably do not arrive in the order in which they were sent.

For a VoIP telephone call to work well the packets sent from the source must arrive within a certain time window (or ‘buffer’) in order for the receiving end to reassemble the packets in the correct order and reproduce the spoken words. When there is excessive jitter the time delay is too long (high latency) and packets arrive outside the time window and get lost from the call (discarded). As a result, the recomposed sound no longer reflects exactly what was sent, and depending of the extent of the delay may not be understandable by the recipient.

2. What is packet loss?

Packet loss plays a key role in the quality of VoIP connections, as high packet loss causes some of the voice data not to arrive to the recipient. Packet loss occurs when voice packets are discarded by the jitter buffer (see previous FAQ), or dropped by network routers/switches due to high congestion. MyVoIPSpeed measures the percentage of packet loss and reports the associated level of sound quality.

3. What is MOS?

The MOS, or Mean Opinion Score, is a numeric measure of the sound quality at the receiving end of a communication circuit. Although the score is subjective it provides a widely-used method to rate the quality of voice communication in a simple way that meaningful to end users. The score is normally between 1 and 5 with 5 being the best. The MOS value is reported in the MyVoIPSpeed PC Advanced edition, where a VoIP simulation that drops below 3.5 is considered poor quality, a measure of 4.2-4.5 is considered good quality.

4. What is the QOS percentage?

MyVoIPSpeed reports the Quality of Service (QOS) for your Internet connection, which represents the level of consistent download bandwidth (or throughput) provided by your ISP. The higher QOS percentage, the higher the overall quality of the connection — which results in better connections for VoIP, video and bandwidth intensive applications. Full Details

5. What is Max Pause?

Max Pause is the longest pause recorded during the download speed test. This should be a very small number. If not, it could indicate Internet congestion or a bad Internet connection.

6. What is the speed test audit report?

The speed test audit report is available under the ‘View, Detail Log’ menu option. The report shows the raw test data results, providing a step by step audit of the elasped time, sockets read, and number of reads. This data is useful for analyzing a connection test and can often identify connectivity problems such as bandwidth throttling by an ISP. Details.

7. What is RTT?

Round-Trip Time (RTT) is the time taken for MyVoIPSpeed PC to send a small request packet to the server, and to receive back a response. This indicates how good the connection path is between you and the server. For best results on a broadband connection, your connection should have a RTT of less than 150ms, and ideally less than 100ms.

8. Why are download and upload speeds different?

Most broadband vendors design their networks with ‘typical usage’ in mind. For the Internet, most people spend a lot more time downloading (music, videos, web sites, etc) than uploading (sending email, etc). By using this design, the savings (in a lower cost network) are passed on to you.

9. Why do I get different results at different times?

Under ideal network conditions, MyVoIPSpeed will provide virtually identical results every time that it is run (verified in lab conditions). And level of accuracy is possible because MyVoIPSpeed measures data transfers down the millisecond (1/1000 second), while most other speed testers can only time data transfers accurate to 1/100 of a second (10’s of milliseconds). So MyVoIPSpeed is very precise.

However, in most environments, you will find that you are sharing the network, your Internet connection, and the server you are connecting to, with other Internet users. So unless you are the only person using the network and the server, you can and should expect a little variation in the results.

If you see wildly different results each time MyVoIPSpeed is run, that strongly suggests that you are sharing your network and/or server with too many other Internet users.

10. Will MyVoIPSpeed work through my firewall?

It should. However, some aggressive firewall techniques may interfere with the MyVoIPSpeed upload test. If you experience problems please contact us.