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Whether your home internet connection seems slow or you’re wondering whether your 4G speeds on your phone are indeed fast, you may be wishing you had a speedometer for your computer or phone. Internet speeds have come a long way from the dial-up days when you could brew a pot of coffee in the time it took to load your email account. But even though Internet connection speeds are faster than days of old, you may be curious how fast your speed really is.
When your Internet provider promises you download and upload speeds to entice you to sign up for service, there is always an asterisk by the number. As with EPA ratings for fuel efficiency, your experience may be quite different from the promised numbers, usually worse.
Your Internet speeds can be affected by a variety of factors, including whether you are connecting to a router with a cable or Wi-Fi, the number of people accessing your Internet provider’s network and the quality of your connection.
A slow Internet connection not only tests your patience, it can make video streaming slow or impossible. Connections can drop just when you’re getting to the good part. Pages, especially those with high quality images, can load slowly or have errors.
So how can you tell the speed of your Internet service?
Speedtest.net is a free service that measures your Internet speeds, both download and upload. The site was founded by Ookla Net Metrics in 2006 and recorded its 3 billionth test earlier this year.
If you’re curious about your Internet speeds, go to speedtest.net from your computer and click Begin Test.
The test takes a matter of seconds to deliver the results. You will be shown the download speeds and the upload speeds. You will also be given options to rate your Internet service provider, compare your results with others and look at the history of your results.
The speeds will be given as numbers, preferably in the mbps (megabits per second) range. If your speeds are in the kbps (kilobits per second) range, your connection is slow and streaming videos will be a struggle. (1 mbps = 1,000 kbps)
Try testing your speeds at different times of day. I have Verizon FIOS and tested my home Internet speeds one night at 8 pm, a busy time for the Internet. My speeds were 18 mbps download and 18 mbps upload. I tested another day at 9:30 in the morning and my speeds were 28 mps download and 18 mbps upload, a big difference in download speeds.
If you have a big file to download, such as a video or a large app, it may be very handy for you to know which time of day your connection speeds will be the fastest.
3G vs. 4G/LTE
If this is making you wonder about the speed of your Internet connection on your smartphone, good news. There’s an app for that! Speedtest has free apps for Android and the iPhone/iPad. With all of the controversy over the 4G speeds of different cell phone carriers, it’s good to test your coverage to see exactly the speeds you are getting.
You can also use the speedtest.net app to see whether that Wi-Fi hotspot you’re using is faster or slower than your 3G or 4G data connection. You may be surprised to learn that your cell phone’s data connection is often faster than public Wi-Fi. Just make sure to watch your monthly data limits . If you’re approaching your monthly limit, you may want to use public Wi-Fi, no matter how slow it is.
Speedtest.net app runs the same test on your smartphone as on your computer. The app keeps a record of your results with the date of the test and whether you tested over Wi-Fi or through your cell phone signal.
You can download the Speedtest app for Android in Google Play, formerly the Android Market, and for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch from the iTunes Store.
Speeds Around the World
I used to run this test regularly when I lived in England and was frustrated to discover that my speeds were in the kbps range (1000 kbps = 1 mbps). The news wasn’t surprising as I had great difficulty streaming videos and loading web pages.
If you’re in Lithuania, good news. Your country has the fastest average download speeds in the world, 32 mbps, as measured by Net Index. If you’re looking to live where download speeds are fast but moving to Lithuania isn’t an option, try:
- 2. South Korea 27 mbps
- 3. Latvia 27 mbps
- 4. Romania 25 mbps
- 5. Macau 24 mbps
The United States ranks 35th in the world with 12 mbps.
If you want to move to the place in the world with the slowest recorded place for Internet connections, ranking 174th in the world, head to the Northern Mariana Islands with 0.5 mbps per second.
Have you tested your Internet speeds on your computer? How about on your phone? Let us know what your speeds are in the Comments section below!
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I am traveling, though not in search of faster Internet speeds, and away from the blog. I will return on April 9 to answer comments. Until then, keep checking back with The Wonder of Tech because I will be posting articles on my regular schedule while I’m away.
* Monorail photo by Joe Penniston
In central Virginia I get 24mbps download and 5.6mbps upload with Comcast cable. How do I find out what I should be getting?
Hi Lee, Those connection speeds are quite good. You can check with your Internet provider to see what was promised but I imagine you will be making other readers jealous with your speeds! 🙂
Wonderful link Carolyn!
I just saw a glimpse of it and would be heading over to check out my Internet speed, which sure gets to a crawling speed when the traffic is more or during the busy hours. Same is the case when it is a holiday and you so much want to surf, but you just can’t. I think at our end it must be slow like when you were in England, though I do need to check it out to know more about it.
Thanks so much for sharing this wonderful site that sure is going to help most of us. 🙂
Hi Harleena, This test can show you which are the slowest times of the day for your Internet connection. If you can avoid being online during the slowest times of the day, you can save yourself some frustration.
I’m glad you found this helpful, Harleena! 🙂
Thanks for the test link Carolyn. My speeds were 4.86 mbps downloading and 3.66 mbps for uploading. Seems sort of slow to me. But we deal with it just fine. It surely is a test of our patience sometimes! At least it’s not dial-up!
Hi Betsy, Great point, it’s all a matter of perspective. If you compare your speeds to dial-up then your speeds are quite fast. But not too many people have dial up speeds anymore.
If you’re not streaming video or loading pages with a lot of images, you may not have problems with your speeds. But if your Internet provider promised much faster speeds that you’re never seeing you may want to contact them to see how your speeds can improve.
My speeds after the test were 4.86 mbps for downloading and 3.66 mbps for uploading. Slow? Idk. We deal with it a lot better than dial-up! I’m sure there’s room for improvement.
Thanks for the test link Carolyn!
Wow – I’m in Toronto, Canada, and I tested very, very slow. I’m shocked! 4.07 for uploading, .5 for downloading! Don’t suppose there is much I can do about it thought….
Hi Ruth, If your speeds are consistently much slower than your Internet provider has promised, you may wish to contact them to see how your speed could improve.
Hi Carolyn,
I use Speedtest.net but mine tends to be slower because it’s ADSL. With ADSL uploads are slower too. My download is 7.5 Mb/s and upload is 800 Kb/s today. Some things speed up the access like optimising the TCP. There is a free program to do that at http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php
It is possible to get even faster speeds. Speeds are often limited by computers and it is possible to trick them. I had a sales person telling me that she could double my speed until she saw I could get faster! I won’t explain that trick, it’s probably illegal!
You could write a blog about Twitter, you’re much better at using it than me! Maybe, it’s because you use a smart phone?
Hi Mike, Yes, those Internet speeds are quite slow so that could be very frustrating for you, especially since you upload so many photographs to your website. I can see where you would want to optimize your speeds.
Yes, using smartphones really helps to stay on top of Twitter. Triberr helps as well. 🙂
I have tested and I don’t recall the exact speed but it was a little below average. I had tested it around 8 pm which is probably a peak time. We have Verizon wireless, but not Fios.
It definitely beats the ‘old’ days but can still get frustrating.
Hi Bill, Yes, I find that 8 pm is a time of very heavy use. Between kids doing their homework, people streaming Netflix, and others surfing the Net, speeds can really slow down in the evenings. If you have a large file, app or video to download, you may want to do it first thing in the morning.
Carolyn,
You guys make me feel truly blessed with my speeds. I am on wi-fi in the house so I don’t get any boost from being hard wired. Mine only seems to slowdown if I have too many tabs open in Firefox or my AVG anti-virus is scanning. I am on 64-bit but I don’t think that affects speed.
Lee
Hi Lee, so far you’re the winner with Internet speeds. It must be nice to know that your speeds are so fast. It still may be helpful for you to test at different times of the day to see if your speeds are consistently fast. If there are times of day that are much slower, you may want to avoid being online then, or avoid uploading or downloading large files then.
Mine are horrible but I’m not sure if it has something to do with our weather right now. It’s storming outside so I’m going to pray that’s it. The upload speed was 1.41 and the download speed was 0.37. Man, that’s just bad…
Hi Adrienne, your speeds are quite slow. You may want to check at different times of the day. I know you upload videos to YouTube quite frequently for your blog so you may want to find the time of day when your speeds are the fastest.
If your Internet provider promised much faster speeds, you may want to contact them to see how you can speed up your connection.
I am quite embarrassed to actually say my results, but yea I am not complaining.
I am not really into streaming HD movies or anything like that… so it doesn’t matter. Wonder what does one do with 24mbps download … 🙂 For them, I say, “With great speed, comes the greater responsibility” 🙂
Have a nice trip Carolyn! We’ll make sure we’ll flood your inbox with nonsensical comments like these when you get back.
Hi iRewardChart, The goal for Internet speed, I think, is for switching between websites to be as fast as changing channels on TV. Wouldn’t that be great?
Your comments are always treasured, iRewardChart! (*)
I’ve never been to Lithuania before, but I have stayed for a while in South Korea. I can attest to the internet speed in that country, it was really mind-blowing!
Hi Chloe, I’ve never visited either South Korea or Lithuania, but now that I know about their Internet speeds, I definitely want to visit those places and check it out! 🙂
I am not sure I need all that speed. It is just there like the air I breathe.
Breathe deeply, Lee, and enjoy. :-bd
great post, i have very fast internet at work it is unbelievable and then when i get home it is like a snail and it drives me crazy so by the look of this test i need to upgrade my home internet. thank you for sharing this with us.
Hi Andrew, You’re absolutely right. If you have speedy Internet at work and glacial Internet at home, that can be incredibly frustrating. You’re wise to upgrade your home connection to avoid endless frustration. :-bd
I am one of those guys that likes to know how fast I am going. I like it so I can either tell people how incredibly slow my connection is or how incredibly fast it is. That sounds like a really cool website and I will have to go check it out.
Hi Steven, If you like to know how fast your Internet speed is, then you will want to bookmark Speedtest.net. You will find that your speeds vary during different times of the day so you will want to test your speeds repeatedly to see when you are getting optimal speeds.
Hi Carolyn i am so terribly sorry for the name issue, i hope i didn’t offend you in any way, you and Adrienne both have the most amazing blogs and i got mixed up and i really do apologize for my mix up.
Lol, Andrew, I took it as a compliment. Kind of like a basketball player being mistaken for Michael Jordan. :-bd
I am excited and waiting for 5G.I feeling fascinated by its amazing features like Expected speed in multiple of Gigabit,Supports high speed hardware,In 5G I can charge my mobile battery with solar energy, Video conferencing, Supports ultra sound technology,Apple has 128 GB minimum storage for 5G.
Hi Charles, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! 5G will be exciting, so long as it doesn’t deplete battery power more quickly than 3G or 4G. I agree, I would love 128 GB iPhone, but I would prefer it on my iPad where the apps take up more room.
Thanks for stopping by and leaving your wonderful comment!