Speedtest.net - Any Good?

[BAPEsta]

My experience with Speedtest.net is that half of the people I talk to says it's shit and the other half says it's good. 

Anyone who actually knows what they're talking about who could finally put this question to rest for me? Is the speeds that Speedtest.net shows realistic or just not? 

This thread could also be used as a bragging thread for peoples speed results...

[Irontheater]

Concerning my own experience, testing it from different platforms, different accounts, and different countries (even continents), I'd say it is pretty accurate.

 

The Down and Up speeds are the most accurate results you can get from a browser based test, while Pings might vary (seeing you test your Ping as to how far you are from their servers, so Ping in games might differ, a lot).

 

Generally, it's my go-to website to test internet speed/latency.

[firest0rm]

it depends really not all speedtest servers are that good they arent all the same

 

so it differs some servers in my country i get high ping and others that are like only 20km away from it i get low ping and good upload/download

 

its accurate enough imho u just gotta chose a good server rly

[Humbug]

It tests the bandwidth and latency between you and a server hosted somewhere. That's all it is- the connectivity between two remote ip addresses somewhere on the Internet. So it's not a question of whether it's good or bad; It is what it is. Just remember it is not representative of the bandwidth and latency you will get when connecting to other destinations on the Internet because the traffic gets routed on different paths.

[Timstertim]

For me it is usually accurate it all depends on what server you choose to connect to. For me usually I connect to my ISP (Internet Service Provider) but I don't know how it varies to other parts of the world as I live on a small island so the server is only a couple of Km away From where I live. What i recommend is trying several servers close by to you to make sure the data is more or less accurate.

[8521546]

i have 70/10 conection and speedtest.net was saying i had 69.96/9.52 mbs

so i wud say its pretty accurate, i do kinda live klose to the server tough... a 5 minute walk :P

[ericlee30]

I agree speedtest.net is pretty accurate to use

[jsnsheets]

SpeedTest.net is good for finding the data transmission rate between your computer, and a particular remote server selected by speedtest.net. This is great for getting a general idea of how fast your computer could potentially communicate across the internet, but does not reflect any real "internet speed".

 

Think of it this way, internet traffic is alot like regular street traffic. You can always make an estimate for how long it might take to travel from one place to another, but the actual time it takes to make any given trip is always changing with increasing internet traffic. On top of that, not all of the (probably millions of) servers/routers/switches making up the internet are created equal. When a connection to one server could be great, your connection to another, equidistant server could be crap.

 

There is nothing wrong with using SpeedTest.net to find your "internet connection speed", however using tracert/ping commands in windows terminal would probably provide a better indication of actual "internet speed", since you can specify the URL of a relevant website/webapp that you actually use on a regular basis. Besides, I doubt you really care how quickly you can connect to some arbitrary SpeedTest.net server.

[Guest]

Moved to networking.

[Richyo]

I tried using speedtest  on a campus iMac and got 200Mbps  :D (100Mbps in a more isolated lab on pc)but there might be a different factor there (ISP is listed as the uni)

 

I asked a CCIE certified friend and he believes that the 200Mbps shouldn't be achievable on a host?