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Internet speed testing
Disconnect all other equipment from your router
If you have equipment accessing to your router / internet service, it may be in the process of downloading or uploading so they will have a negative effect on your results.
Close all browsers and all other programs on your computer.
If you have other browsers or web pages open, your results may be affected negatively. Also it would be a good idea to ensure that there are no programs on the testing computer which are using the internet – these include email programs, torrents, active VPN’s etc. Also, if you can, pause the Windows updates.
Connecting your equipment
The best way to get the most accurate reading is by connecting your computer directly to your router with a network cable. We normally levee a Yellow cable connected to the router for you. If you dont have a network cable for this, just give Megganet a call. However, if you do not have a cable or your device has no RJ45 network port, you can still do a speed test – it will just not be as accurate.
If you must use a Wi-Fi device to test your internet speed, please ensure it is connected to the Wi-Fi from the router and not a remote Wi-Fi access point Also, make sure the 4G service on your mobile device is disabled for the duration of the test.
Prepare your equipment
For the best results, restart your router. This clears out any latent activity in your router and resets its connection to the internet.
Next, before carrying out the test, restart your device. This clears the cache and any software which may affect the results.
Speed testing sites
There are many internet speed testing websites which test the speed between your device and one of their servers. Each of these servers is in a different location and the speed testing programs use different paths to get to them. This means that you will obtain different results from different speed testers!
Biased results
We have discovered that certain internet providers optimise speed testers so that the connections between your internet Point Of Presence (POP, essentially, your Router) and their own servers. Although this is reasonable, it is good for testing connections for issues.
If you are reporting a speed issue to us, we will only accept results from our own speed tester at speedtest.megganet.com as this connects directly to our system and we can access it for any prevailing issues. Also, your speed test results are stored on our system and you can view your historical results from within your control panel.
Megganet always recommend you to check your speed from a variety of sites in other than Megganet sites so you can get a good average.
Speed checkers
This is a small sample of speed checkers you can use.
| speedtest.megganet.com | Megganet sped checker will give you the most accurate and consistent results. Also used by our diagnostics team. |
| openspeedtest.com | Open speed test is an independent speed tester. |
| speedtest.net | Ookla Speed test. Popular, particularly on mobile devices |
| fast.com | Netflix speed tester. Tests your download speed from a Netflix server. |
| supportal-test.co.uk | Another internet speed testing website. |
| speedtest.btwholesale.com | The BT Wholesale speed testing website. |
Interpreting the results
Its quite possible that each of the testers yield different results which may be confusing. The Ping is a measure of the amount of time needed for data to travel from your device to the testing server. The shorter the better. Wireless and Satellite systems have huge Ping which makes them unsuitable for gaming. Less than 50 is recommended for interactive data capture devices.
The download is basically the download speed between the testing server and your device.
The upload is the upload seed between your device and the testing server. This is usually much lower than your download and should be relatively stable on a wire or fibre based internet service. Wireless internet tends to be asynchronous and upload and down load speed match.
Caching
Caching is where your system may have data stored on it to help give the appearance of a faster connection you actually have. For example, lets say you view a web page with lots of photos like a face book page. Your device may download and store the pictures on your device. So the next time your browse to the same page, your device takes the pictures from its ‘Cache’ memory instead of wasting time re downloading the same pictures again.
Some enterprises may install a Cache controller for their organisation which can really mess up your results!
Most internet systems have some sort of caching system in place so when you see an initially high download speed followed by a lower speed, the cache is interfering with your results. Because of this it is possible for a tester to show higher data transfer speeds than is obtainable.
There is nothing we can do about this so for best results, run a few checkers a few times and you can run them at different times of the day to get a feel for the pattern of variations in upload and download speeds through the day. Wireless service speeds will vary dramatically through the day but that’s a separate web page!