To work and communicate well on the Internet, you need a high data rate. Simply put, an Internet connection is the maximum amount of data received or transmitted to the network by a device in a certain amount of time. How to check the speed, what affects its drop and what you can do about it.
What does the speed of your Internet connection depend on?
Internet connection speed cannot be constant and unchanging due to a number of factors: time of day and week, condition and type of communication lines, technical condition of servers.
Also, the speed can be limited by:
The number of devices using a particular network node;
the load on the line;
obsolete equipment;
number of running resources;
presence of computer viruses.
When using a wireless connection, the speed is also affected by the state of the router, the distance from the signal source, etc. And in this case, the speed can be lower than a wired connection.
How to check the speed
Connecting the Internet, users want to know at what speed will open pages, download files, etc. This is easy to do with the help of special online services. Before you start checking, you need to understand what parameters to pay attention to:
incoming speed – the speed of downloading files from the Web. It is considered the main indicator. The higher the value, the faster pages are loaded, files are downloaded, videos are opened;
outgoing speed – the speed of downloading files to the network or other users’ devices.
Ping – the time of your computer’s response to the request. The higher the value, the longer it takes to open a page. The lower this value, the faster is the data exchange.
Before you start checking and get more accurate test results, you should remove factors that affect the speed:
close unnecessary tabs in the browser and programs;
Leave the Internet connection only on the device on which you want to test the speed.
Next, simply check your speed with free online services. Thanks to a quick test, you can always monitor whether the actual speed corresponds to the speed declared by the Internet provider.