What Do They Actually Mean?

Summary

• Internet speed tests vary due to network changes, so don’t rely too much on single results.
• Understanding download and upload speeds, measured in Mbps, are key to comprehending test results.
• Ping and jitter measurements indicate network health, aim for low numbers for better connectivity and perform speed tests accordingly.

An internet speed test is a test of the speed your internet has. Simple, right? Well, it turns out that interpreting internet speed tests can be confusing, and you might think it means something it doesn’t!

Running an Internet Speed Test

First, let’s look at how you perform an internet speed test. This part is extremely simple, since there are many different options to choose from, and you can even do all of these if you like.

The most popular is probably Ookla’s speedtest.net. All you have to do is open the website in your browser, hit the big “GO” button, and wait for the results.

The test will automatically select a destination server for you, but you can manually pick on if you want to now your performance to a specific location in the world. most of the time it correctly picks the server that gives the best-case results.

I also like Netflix’s fast.com test site, since it specifically shows how fast your connection is to the nearest Netflix server. That’s pretty useful when my Netflix shows look more smeary than usual.

Finally, there’s a built-in speed test tool in Google. If you search for “speed test” a little web app will appear at the top of the results. If you click on “run speed test” you’ll see a result like this one.

You’ll notice that all three of these speed tests have different results, which is the first thing you should know about speed tests: they’re not that reliable or useful.

Network conditions are always changing, and the internet is the most complex machine humans have ever created in history. So how well your connection works changes from one second to the next.

Speed test results are useful for diagnosing why exactly your internet services aren’t working as they should, or to check that, on average, you’re getting the speeds you pay for. That said, let’s dig into how to interpret the numbers.

The Download and Upload Numbers and What They Mean

The two main numbers are your download and upload speeds. The download speed is how fast data in the test moved from the test server to your local device. Upload speeds are the reverse of this.

The speed is measured in Mbps or Megabits Per Second. A “megabit” contains one million bits. I.e. ones and zeroes. That’s very different from a megabyte, which contains a million bytes, with each standard byte consisting of eight bits. This means that a megabyte is eight times larger than a megabit. Therefore, a download speed of 100 Mbps equates to roughly 12.5 MB/s.

There are two types of home internet connection: symmetrical and asymmetrical. Symmetrical connections have the same speed rating in both directions. Asymmetrical connections typically have a slower upload speed. Commonly it’s half of the download speed, but on some budget connections it might be a tenth. Keep this in mind if your upload stats look much worse than your downloads.

It’s important to emphasize that these numbers measure the speed of data transmission from your device to the test server and back again. We’ll revisit this fact soon, but it’s an important distinction.

Ping and Jitter Explained

Not every speed test will show you your ping or jitter, but if they do, you’ll obviously want to know what these words and numbers mean.

Ping is also known as “latency” and is a measure of the round-trip travel time for a packet of data from your device to a remote server and back. The further away the server, the less ping (measured in milliseconds) will be. What’s a good ping number? That depends on what you’re trying to do on the internet. If you’re loading web pages or watching buffered streaming video, then a ping of 300ms might not be an issue. If you’re playing an online shooter, you really want it to be 50ms at most, and preferably in the single digits. This is why it’s better to play on local servers!

Jitter is a little more complicated, but it’s essentially a measure of how variable your average ping is. This is a better indicator of how healthy the network connection is, and if you have more than 30ms of jitter, it’s a good indicator that something’s not right on your own home network, or between you and the test server. Lower is better!

Why Your Wi-Fi Speed Isn’t Your Internet Speed

We’ve been talking about your internet speed so far, and remember when I said to remember that these tests tell you the speed from the device you’re running the test from to the test server? This is important because your internet speed test result is only as fast as the slowest part of the connection. My Ookla speed test result above is just over 250Mbps, but that’s measured from a device on Wi-Fi. My TP-Link Deco mesh router system has the Ookla speed test app built in, which means I can also run a speed test directly on the router connected to my fiber terminal.

This removed my entire home network from the equation, and tells me how fast the connection is as it enters my home.

It’s about 200Mbps faster than the result I got on my Wi-Fi device, and that’s because the Wi-Fi in the spot I ran the test couldn’t go any faster. If you want to test the speed of your LAN (Local Area Network) because you need to stream using something like Plex, or you have a NAS, you can use something like LAN Speed Test, which is a bit more complicated to set up, but will show you how fast data can be moved between two points on your local network.

Getting Better Speed Over Wi-Fi Connections

If you’re not getting your full internet speed over Wi-Fi, is that a problem? That depends on what you need to do. Usually, the total bandwidth of the connection is shared between everyone in your home. So getting about 50% of my total speed on my office Wi-Fi is fair, and I honestly don’t need more than that.

If you need more of the speed you’re paying for on a specific device or in a specific room, there are many things you can do about it. We’ve put together numerous guides over the years. Start with general tips on speeding up your internet connection, then look at how to improve your Wi-Fi for free, and, of course, the various ways to improve Wi-Fi signal specifically.