Test Your Internet Speed

For most households, 50–100 Mbps download is plenty for streaming, video calls and remote work at the same time. For 4K streaming on multiple devices or large families, 200+ Mbps is comfortable. More important than raw speed is line quality: a stable 50 Mbps connection with low ping outperforms an unstable gigabit line in practice.

Providers advertise the maximum speed up to your modem. After that, speed is lost through WiFi (often 30–60% loss), older devices, network cables or simultaneous use by others. Test over an ethernet cable to see what actually comes in. If wired speeds still fall far short of your plan, contact your provider.

Ping (latency) is the time a data packet needs to travel to a server and back, measured in milliseconds. Below 20 ms is excellent, 20–50 ms is good, above 100 ms you will notice delay in gaming and video calls. Fiber typically achieves 5–15 ms, cable 10–30 ms and 4G/5G 25–60 ms.

Jitter is the variation in your ping: how unevenly packets arrive. A low average ping with high jitter still causes stuttering video calls and laggy games. Below 5 ms jitter is excellent; above 30 ms, real-time applications develop noticeable problems.

Bufferbloat occurs when your router queues up packets instead of processing them immediately, especially when someone downloads a large file. Your ping can spike from 15 ms to hundreds of milliseconds — which is why your video call stutters the moment a download starts. Our speed test measures this automatically. Fix: enable Smart Queue Management (SQM/QoS) on your router.

Connect your computer via ethernet cable, close other programs and tabs, and make sure nobody else is streaming or downloading during the test. Run the test at different times of day: between 7 and 10 PM your provider's network is busiest and you see real performance under load.