The expansion of the internet has aroused massive enhancement to our existence. Just a century ago, life without the internet seems unpredictable. It has revolutionized to the extent that the Internet is now our preferred medium of communication.

On the whole, it is important to ensure you have a reliable and fast connection that is competent enough to endure your household needs.

A reliable and high-speed internet connection is the only considerable factor to enjoy a seamless connection. However, lacking in this factor can affect your communications at work and ultimately lead to an entire loss of work.

Lots of people are distracted with internet speed, they don’t know what internet speed is, how it works, and why they are paying more for their internet speed. So speed must be important. Right?

You must take a speed test and comprehend its results in order to determine where the problem occurs.

How Should You Check Your Internet Speed?

How fast is your internet? For checking your internet speed, all you need is an internet speed test tool like Ookla. With this speed test tool, you can check the speed of your Wi-Fi and the quality of your connected device to the internet.

However, the results of this test will confide you about your download and upload speeds also latency, or ping time. Some of these tools also tell about the variation in ping time and jitter.

What Do My Internet Speed Test Results Show?

To analyze the results you should be familiar with Internet jargon, once you know about these terms it will be easy for you to determine the problems.

These tests analyze the various aspects of your internet connection such as download speed, upload speed, ping time. All of these have connection-specific qualities that help you to understand the final results.

Download Speed vs Upload Speed

With the download speed test, you will get to know the time that it will take to pull the data, whereas upload speed refers to how fast information is transferred from your device to other destinations or devices on the internet.

Both download and upload speeds are measured in megabits per second (Mbps). When speeds get very fast then we consider them in gigabits per second (Gbps).

Latency:

High latency can lead you to more buffering and streaming video and can be disturbing in activities like video calling or online gaming.

Latency or lag is the important measurement for internet speed which shows the time that lapses between your devices and signals that it will take to send the information through the internet.

Latency is also referred to as ping time- it is the time that devices used to send the small data package to the test server. When the server receives this package, it will transmit it back to your devices to complete the one round trip. The time data takes to complete the one round trip is called Latency or ping.

To ensure the accuracy in reading, multiple ping tests will run simultaneously for a seamless experience and it should stay below the level of 100ms.

Jitter:

Wondering what jitter is and how it affects your internet speed? Jitter refers to a variation in latency. In reality, there is no jitter.

All the data that your devices receive will remain in a fluid stream, each data packet arrives at equal intervals. Anything that comes under 30 ms is considered an acceptable amount of jitter but it depends on the programs that you are using, you might experience some issues.

Usually, jitter would not be apparent when you are just surfing and reading online, but when you use streaming or gaming programs, it can cause interruptions.

How much Internet Speed Do I need?

The amount of internet speed and its requirements will vary widely depending on your household size and usage, the number of devices connected and intended activities, etc.

If you are using more visual stuff, it will require more internet, also if you have multiple users at home connected to the same device then you will need a faster internet connection.

Video streaming and large downloads can consume a lot of internet speed. Whereas, online gaming requires less of it.

Best Internet Speed:

The good internet speed ranges from 25-30 Mbps for most users. This range is enough to fulfill your basic requirements like web browsing, video, and audio streaming, downloading a file, and online gaming.

We all wish to do these activities on more than a couple of devices at the same time, but for this, you will require a higher speed. If you think you are not getting what you are paying for, then this is the right time to rethink your internet service provider.

For your help, we’ve tested and analyzed all available speed tests from top internet service providers. Let’s have a look at the fastest internet providers.

Fastest Internet Providers:

The providers such as CenturyLink, AT&T, Windstream, and Frontier Communications deliver high-speed DSL connections with a range of speed up to 100Mbps.

Whereas, providers such as Mediacom, Spectrum, Xfinity, and Cox communications give broadband speed up to 1000Mbps to some regions, depending on the network capacity we use. The average speed of broadband service provides the range of 10-500 Mbps. With fiber “Ultra-fast internet, you can enjoy video streaming and online gaming or any other type of activity at the fastest internet speed.

Bottom Line:

“To choose the best services or package for your usage, you must understand your Internet needs.”. You need to think about the number of devices that will simultaneously connect to your internet network and do exactly what you need to do with your connection.

This will depend more on the number of usages like video streaming, movie sharing, and uploading.

After reading this, you should analyze your network speeds and determine what problem occurs during. However, if you think you are not getting what you are paying for then it is the right time to call your internet service provider.