Your subscription promises a decent speed. Yet the video call keeps faltering and uploading a file takes forever. Is it the provider, the WiFi or your laptop? With a fair speed test, you can often find out yourself.
Want to measure straight away? Take our free speed test. It takes about half a minute.
What does a speed test measure?
A good speed test measures four things:
- Download: how fast you receive data, such as a website or a film.
- Upload: how fast you send data, such as your video during a call or a file to the cloud.
- Ping: the time a signal needs to travel there and back. This is also called latency or response time. The lower, the better.
- Jitter: how much the ping varies. You notice an unsteady connection through choppy video and sound.
Many people only look at the download speed. But for video calls and collaboration, ping and jitter often matter more. And if you work a lot in the cloud or with AI, you also need a good upload. On many connections, it is much lower than the download. A symmetrical connection is as fast up as down.
Why are you not getting the speed from your subscription?
A subscription often promises speeds "up to" a certain level. What you actually get depends on the whole chain, from the cable in the street to the device on your desk:
- The WiFi. Distance, walls, floors and other networks nearby cost speed. An older WiFi standard handles fewer devices at once.
- Your device. An older laptop or phone cannot always keep up with a fast connection.
- The router and the cabling. An old router or old network cable slows down everything behind it. At the office, the cabling in the building also plays a role.
- Other users. If housemates or colleagues are streaming, on video calls or downloading at the same time, you share the capacity.
- A VPN. It routes your traffic via a detour and often costs speed.
How to test fairly in six steps
- Start with a cable. Connect your laptop to the router with a network cable. That way you mainly measure your connection, without the WiFi in between.
- Then test over WiFi, close to the router. Is the difference large? Then you are already losing speed in the WiFi.
- Test in the places where you actually work. At your desk, in the meeting room, in the attic. In our speed test you choose the place for each measurement and compare the results side by side.
- Close other programs and switch off any VPN for a moment.
- Measure at different times. A connection can perform differently in the evening or in the middle of the working day.
- Measure a few times. One outlier says little. Look at the pattern.
What is a good result?
That depends on what you do. A few pointers:
- Video calls: above all, a low and stable ping matters. In the scoring rules of Cloudflare, which provides the measurement in our test, a ping below 10 to 20 milliseconds scores best.
- Working in the cloud and with AI: look at the upload, not just the download.
- With many people at once: check whether the ping rises when the connection is busy. Our test measures that too. If the ping rises a lot, you notice it in video calls when everyone is working at the same time.
That is why our test also gives the result in plain language, for example: "Video calls: good" or "Uploading is much slower than downloading".
At home or at the office: the difference
At home it is usually simple: one router, a few devices. If the cable is fast and the WiFi is slow, it often helps to move the router to a better spot or add an extra access point. Still slow via the cable? Then contact your provider and show them your measurement.
At the office it is more complicated. Dozens of people share the same connection, there are several access points and cabling runs through the whole building. A slow connection can then have many causes. So measure in several places and at several times, and compare. Large differences between places usually point to the WiFi or the cabling. Slow everywhere? Then it is more often the connection itself or the subscription. Also read Office WiFi: why "we have WiFi" is not enough.
Disappointing result?
A speed test is an indication of that moment, on that device. It is a good start, but not a complete measurement. Want to know for sure for your commercial building?
- With connectivity advice we measure on site, in several places and at several times, and we look at your contracts and subscriptions.
- With a pre-inspection we look at the entire digital infrastructure of the building, from the meter cupboard to the roof.
Start by measuring: take the free speed test. If the result is disappointing, you can send it to us straight away.