We always wonder if the advertised speeds by Internet Service Providers (ISP) are what you actually get when you use their services. The answer is obviously a NO. For those who use WiFi mesh at homes or offices, this also still remains a challenge. Most speed tests always give you varying results. The question for the ages is — How can one get a true reading of the actual speeds they are actually getting from their ISPs?
In most cases, as I said before your ISP will always give you a number in mbps but if you read carefully there are always certain terms and conditions (Friendly User Policy) attached to these expected speeds. ISPs use words like “up to X mbps” which tell you that what they are giving you is the potential maximum speeds and they never guarantee these speeds. It means you will get speeds may be as fast as .. what is has been quoted. This is the first this one needs to understand especially for newbies and this is the reason why people do speed tests.
Truth be told, this question has a lot of factors attached to it and it can be more complicated by your choice of WiFi modem or router. Your ISP, especially if its mobile data, will be inconsistent and this is less true for dedicated microwave or fiber connections. You will have to know that your end -point internet service is connected to a broad internet at your ISP.
For graphical purposes for example, let’s say your ISP has a “big tube” which we can call their total internet access coming into their premises. This is connected to a switch subdivides it to all its customers or via any last mile technology like Fiber, or Mobile (3G or 4G) — you all the customers are dividing that “big tube” into little amounts and it will fluctuate if they have so many customers in that one or two or one thousand customers can get the total down especially if they are such bandwidth hogs it is expected for shared internet service to deteriorate for some customers. For course those with dedicated internet may not be impacted by this and that’s why it comes at a premium price.
A 3G or 4G service in most cases is a shared service and in most cases and factors like the number of people connected to the cell tower, time of day (peek times), your distance from the cell town and obstacles all which affect the speeds. So there is a limit on the number of people per cell tower that must be connected and each will use best effort service when they try to connect to the internet. So you will notice that your internet speeds go down and but for dedicated users it will vary around a figure that they actually bought. So for example if you have a neighbour next door with three teenagers who are always online and all these three are watching YouTube and your neighbour is watching Netflix they are drawing a lot of bandwidth and that’s why people who share the service will notice a drop in internet speeds.
The next factor to put into consideration is in your own last mile device you are using. The speed of the device you are using can also limit the speeds. For those who use MiFi devices or an office/home WiFi mesh. The WiFi radios your phones, laptops and other devices are all not made equal, some are better than others and some are faster than others. This means that you may find that you can have two phones in front of you on the same WiFi connection and the speeds are dramatically different.
So it comes down the hardware or the version of the Operating System you are using and all these can have an impact on the speeds. A MAC laptop can get different speeds than a windows laptop. And if you add a WiFi Mesh (many WiFi devices serving a common home or office) and one this most mesh devices claim to do is bandwidth shaping. These devices have the capability to “watch whats going on” for example they can tell that user 1 is using email so they give him say 500 kbps, and in the other room user 2 is watching a UHD (4K) Netflix movie and they need say 5 Mbps to watch this and the home teenager user 3 is watching WhatsApp statues and given say 2 Mbps. So the mesh network can figure out who to give what speeds according to their demands, it knows the devices connected and its constantly shaping the bandwidth (internet speeds) for each device to accommodate the device’s needs.
So when you run a speed test in this scenario, it will vary according to what other people are in the house or connect to the WiFi mesh or WiFi modem. So your mesh modem may not allow you to buffer user two who is watching a Netflix stream because you are running a speed test and need to get the actual speeds of the network. This and many other factors make it hard to get a single number.
So if you want to get an accurate speed test, always do the test at multiple times, throughout the day, and you probably want to use different servers when doing the test. So there is the famous SpeedTest.net, broadbandreports.com, and Netflix’s own Speed test called Fast.com. These will help you test with at least three different servers and brace yourself, none of them will give you the same number and will vary depending on time of day but at least you will be able to get an idea of the shape of what’s going on.
Always note that download speeds are the most important values, even if upload speed is also relevant especially for people who share videos often. The fact that is whenever you upload data to the internet, each packet needs some kind of confirmation that will go through the download to confirm that it has been received, and it’s easy to saturate your upload and make downloads impossible. So even if you are only uploading a little bit, it can actually make your downloads much slower so that’s another factor to consider. You should also look at latency. This is the amount of time it takes to send single packet to the server and back. So very high latency means bad streaming, Voice over the internet and bad online gaming experience. And there is something called jitter, which is like latency and will also impact your internet experience.
All these factors combined make a picture of your internet access, in other words the speeds test figure that your ISP is giving you is basically meaningless.
