Buffering video, slow downloads, sluggish browsing… All of these things could be caused by a slow Internet connection. A fast connection is especially important for streaming video and music or playing video games. You may be paying for a high-speed connection, but how can you be sure you’re getting your money’s worth.
I’ve told you before about Speedtest.net which is a great free tool for checking your speed. The only drawback is there are a lot of ads on the page that you might accidentally click on.
There’s an ad-free alternative offered by Netflix. Except for a bit of Netflix branding at the bottom right, the look of the site is pretty clean. It seems the least Neflix could do, since they’re taking up about half of the bandwidth out there streaming their programs.
Just follow this link https://fast.com/ and you’ll see your download speed.
Click on show more info underneath your download speed to see your upload speed as well as the latency speeds. Latency is how long it takes data to travel between its source and destination. For example, the time between when you click on a link at it appears or you hit the play button for a video and it plays. Latency can make even a fast connection feel slow.
FYI: The suggested minimum download speed for streaming HD video is 5 Mbps. For Ultra HD or 4K, it’s 25 Mbps.
Great info.
I noticed that the speed changes within Minutes / over time. What might be causing this change? It would matter because sometimes a page might load quickly and other times it may take a little longer. Does it have to do with traffic overall on the Internet? Or is it a local phenomenon?