Network Speed/Latency/Ping/Jitter/Packet loss Tests
Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2016 10:53 pmBufferbloat: You want this value to be low. A high value means that too much is being buffered. Ideally you want this to be close to 0. If a value is high it may cause a increase in Ping/latency. Buffering may happen at many stages, like in routers/switches/servers/network cards.
Ping: How long until you get the first packet. You want this value to be low. This value can never be 0 since you can't be faster than the speed of light, going halfway around the world takes a little while. You do want this value to be as consistent as possible and as low as possible though. A latency above 100ms is noticeable by humans, above 200ms gaming input accuracy may start to suffer (depends on the game). High latency should not affect a stream's quality, but it may indicate even more severe issues if there is also packet loss. The closer the source and destination are the lower the ping (or latency). In you own wired home network it should be less than 1ms. Around the world it would be over 120ms.
Latency: Almost the same as Ping, only this is how "long" it takes for a stream of packets. Often Ping and Latency is lumped together. Ping and latency may sometime be called Response time.
Jitter: You want this value to be 0 or as close to 0 as possible. Jitter is the time difference between packets, if packets arrive a little too fast/slow the jitter value increases. Large values can affect live audio streams for example and could manifest as packet loss.
Packetloss: You want this value to be 0. Any packet loss means that packets has to be resent, this will cause your Down/upstream speeds to drop. With live audio/video streams you will experience missing audio or video frames as these do not resend lost packets.
Downstream: You want this value to as close as possible to what you pay for (or higher). Your ISP may or may not include the overhead in their claimed speed, overhead is usually around 10%. The higher the value the more data can be sent at once.
Upstream: You want this value to as close as possible to what you pay for (or higher). Your ISP may or may not include the overhead in their claimed speed, overhead is usually around 10%. The higher the value the more data can be sent at once.
Various speed/bandwidth/internet test services:
International means there is no specified location or it is automatically regional, regional means the test service will test against the closest regional/local server and let you choose a server, US? or Scandinavia? means it may be restricted to that area so it may not be that useful (unless you want to test against that particular region).
Please note that not all these services may be able to handle your bandwidth (for example speedtest6.com) so will be unable to max out your line.
If you wish to test against a specific region/country then use a service that let you choose a server (for example speedtest.net).
How much details you get from the tests varies, the most detailed (and with nice statistics and explanation of what it all means) is shown with the sourceforge test.
- HTML5 (Downstream/Upstream/Ping/Latency/Jitter/Packet Loss)
- https://sourceforge.net/speedtest/ International
- HTML5 (Downstream/Upstream/Ping/Latency)
- http://www.bredbandskollen.se/ Sweden/(Scandinavia?)
- http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest International
- http://www.measurementlab.net/tools/ndt/ International
- http://openspeedtest.com/ International
- http://speedof.me/ International
- http://beta.speedtest.net/ Regional/International
- HTML5 (Downstream/Upstream)
- http://www.speedtest6.com/ Japan
- http://nl.speedtest6.com/ Netherlands
- HTML5 (Downstream)
- https://fast.com/ (Netflix) International
- FLASH (Downstream/Upstream/Ping/Latency)
- (none yet)
If any useful test services are missing, please post here and I (or a mod) will add them to the lists. Ideally only HTML5 based tests should be added. Java and Flash are slowly getting phased out and considered deprecated.