One of the first things that users do when they get a broadband Internet connection is to visit so called speed tests on the Internet that measure the upload and download speed of a connection. This is great for bragging rights but also a good way to check if the advertised speeds are the real speeds. Most Internet providers tend to use phrases like “up to” to advertise their Internet connections.
One major problem is the reliability of those speed tests on the Internet. Some show lower speeds even if the Internet connection is able to handle faster speeds. This can be due to server capacities at the speed test host, the location of the servers in the world or general routing problems that affect the measured speed.
Speed.io is the first broadband speed test on the Internet that measured the speed of an Internet connection correctly. Every other speed test was usually missing a few thousand Kbits. The service measures the download and upload speed, the maximum number of connections and the response time of the Internet connection.
The download speed test result was 14806 Kbit and the result of the upload speed test was 990 Kbit which comes close to the maximum capacities of the 16 Mbit / 1 Mbit advertised speed of the Internet provider.
The developers of Speed.io claim to utilize 50.000 servers world wide for their speed tests which seems an awful lot but would be an incredible infrastructure if this was the case. Still, it does not really matter if they have 1 or 50K servers as long as the speed tests are accurate.
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I just get an error that tells me to update my Flash version. I though it was up-to-date, but followed the link and updated just in case. Returned to Speed.io and got the same error. Looks cool, but I cant get it to work.
Tells me I’m on 6 kb/s, paying for 10…so I want a deduction from my bill! Pah!
Started the test, waited, waited … stopped, went to read FAQ, my security appeared in the list mentioning it should be deactivated for the test, I deactivated (I don’t like that, feeling like naked on Broadway), restarted test, waited, waited … stopped, retriggered security, and here I am.
Anyhow, I know approximately where my speed stands. If I want to know for sure, I go to ftp://test-debit.free.fr/ and start downloading a 700MB file, wait at least three minutes, and the average download speed result is clean.
@Matt – Restart your browser! At me works great, just had to reopen the browser. i also updated to Flash 9 now
Seems to be accurate for download but upload failed once and gave wrong numbers other time.
Pleasantly surprised.
It surpassed my broadband package maximum of 758kb/s for uploads by 10kb/s. But 110kb/s for downloads is a bit off. Rated “Good”.
And just this morning I was bitching about poor service. Guess it’s time to upgrade my plan.
cool! works excellent, thanks for the link!
hm, nice test, but I don’t think that the upload is correct
http://speed.io/pics/1118/5197/speed.io.png
incredibly inaccurate, as 99.9% of these speedtests are, for users with more than 10mbit.
There is only one, out of the many websites I’ve tested, which comes in anywhere close to reliable. It’s this site:
http://myspeed.visualware.com
Im on 100/100 (and get full speeds), and it gives me the following results:
http://amsterdam.mcs.streamguys.com/myspeed/db/report?id=10859
Yeah this one sucked too…
But it was quite fun to see the Upload-meter reach the end (13708 Kbit/s), and then reporting “Very Slow”. I guess it did like a full lap internally and came back on the bad side.
Your download speed on a certain server will depend on a lot of factors before you can get a reliable information on your full speed. If you’re in Japan, and you’re using a speed test website located on Africa… you’re doing it wrong. Find a speedtest(.net) that has servers all across the world and pick one close to you, tha one should be the most reliable.
Not to brag or anything but I think I found a better test…. The above test gives basic speed information but no real info you quality or capability of your connection. My favorite Broadband Speed Test site is http://www.ispgeeks.com.
You get data back like this (testing my connection)
Speed test statistics
———————
Download speed: 7437424 bps
Upload speed: 1646448 bps
Download quality of service: 97 %
Upload quality of service: 95 %
Download test type: socket
Upload test type: socket
Maximum TCP delay: 76 ms
Average download pause: 3 ms
Minimum round trip time to server: 60 ms
Average round trip time to server: 61 ms
Estimated download bandwidth: 35200000bps
Route concurrency: 4.7328215
Download TCP forced idle: 77 %
Maximum route speed: 8738000bps
Plus it even gives you graphical data such as this (based on the test above).
http://174.34.146.20/myspeed/db/report?id=1986