For best results, please read the advice below before running the test.
This speed tester only works on Megganet internet connections. The results of these tests are temporarily stored on Megganet systems for analytics, performance monitoring and stability monitoring.
Disconnect all other equipment from your router
If you have equipment accessing to your router / internet service, it may be in the process of downloading or uploading so they will have a negative effect on your results.
Close all browsers and all other programs on your computer
If you have other browsers or web pages open, your results may be affected negatively. Also it would be a good idea to ensure that there are no programs on the testing computer which are using the internet – these include email programs, torrents, active VPN’s etc. Also, if you can, pause the Windows updates.
Connecting your equipment
The best way to get the most accurate reading is by connecting your computer directly to your router with a network cable.
Speed testing using a Wi-Fi connected device
IN ALMOST ALL CASES WHERE A CLIENT HAS CALLED US OUT TO A SLOW INTERNET CONNECTION WHERE THE CLIENT HAS MEASURED THE INTERNET SPEED USING WI-FI, THE CLIENTS EQUIPMENT OR PROCEDURE HAS BEEN THE CAUSE OF THE LOW SPEEDS.
If you must use a Wi-Fi device to test your internet speed, please ensure it is connected to the Wi-Fi from the router and not a remote Wi-Fi access point.
- If you must use a Wi-Fi device to test your internet speed, please ensure it is connected to the Wi-Fi from the router and not a remote Wi-Fi access point.
- Make sure there are no other devices connected to the router.
- Make sure you are within 2 meters of the Router.
- Make sure the device you are using (mobile phone, iPad, tablet, laptop etc) has line of sight of the router.
- Remember, the a device connected to your router by Wi-Fi WILL NOT be able to use the full speed of the internet so your results WILL be lower and may be as much as 50% lower.
- Also, make sure the 4G service on your mobile device is disabled for the duration of the test.
- Make sure the device you are using is capable of handling the Wi-Fi speed of the router. We have had clients with 330MM/s down internet speed getting less than 50MB/s down on their phone. This was because the phone was a Wi-Fi 3 device with a maximum download speed of 54MB/s down.
- Modern Wi-Fi routers may also claim ridiculous Wi-Fi speeds which your mobile device may simply never attain. This is because the Wi-Fi Router may transmit on several different frequencies simultaneously. Usually, a mobile device only uses a single frequency. For example, A modern Router may transmit at 2.4Ghz (450Mb/s to 600MB/s), 5GHz (1300MB/s) and 6GHz (9.6GB/s). Also, within each there are Wi-Fi standards such as 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n, or 802.11ac.
- Test on multiple devices if you can. We have had complaints from clients, of very low Wi-Fi speeds on their mobile device. In one case it was 1.5MB/s down and this was on a 330MB/s FTTP service! Our engineer visited and was able to demonstrate 180MB/s on another phone.
Prepare your equipment
For the best results, restart your computer (or other device) and your router. This clears out any latent activity and cache in your router and resets its connection to the internet.
Speed testing sites
There are many internet speed testing websites which test the speed between your device and one of their servers. Each of these servers is in a different location and the speed testing programs use different paths to get to them. This means that you will obtain different results from different speed testers!
Biased results
We have discovered that certain internet providers optimise speed testers so that the connections between your internet Point Of Presence (POP, essentially, your Router) and their own servers. Although this is reasonable, it is good for testing connections for issues.
If you are reporting a speed issue to us, we will only accept results from our own speed tester at speedtest.megganet.com as this connects directly to our system and we can access it for any prevailing issues. Also, your speed test results are stored on our system and you can view your historical results from within your control panel.
Megganet always recommend you to check your speed from a variety of sites in other than Megganet sites so you can get a good average.
Interpreting the results
Its quite possible that each of the testers yield different results which may be confusing. The Ping is a measure of the amount of time needed for data to travel from your device to the testing server. The shorter the better. Wireless and Satellite systems have huge Ping which makes them unsuitable for gaming. Less than 50 is recommended for interactive data capture devices.
The download is basically the download speed between the testing server and your device.
The upload is the upload seed between your device and the testing server. This is usually much lower than your download and should be relatively stable on a wire or fibre based internet service. Wireless internet tends to be asynchronous and upload and down load speed match.
Caching
Caching is where your system may have data stored on it to help give the appearance of a faster connection you actually have. For example, lets say you view a web page with lots of photos like a facebook page. Your device may download and store the pictures on your device. So the next time your browse to the same page, your device takes the pictures from its ‘Cache’ memory instead of wasting time re downloading the same pictures again.
Some enterprises may install a Cache controller for their organisation which can really mess up your results!
Most internet systems have some sort of caching system in place so when you see an initially high download speed followed by a lower speed, the cache is interfering with your results. Because of this it is possible for a tester to show higher data transfer speeds than is obtainable.
There is nothing we can do about this so for best results, run a few checkers a few times and you can run them at different times of the day to get a feel for the pattern of variations in upload and download speeds through the day. Wireless service speeds will vary dramatically through the day but that’s a separate web page!
