If you ware wondering if you are getting the level of service promised by your ISP then the SpeedTest.net tool is a great way to check. They have a slick interface for selecting the test router closest to your location. They both maintain a history of your past tests so you can see if tweaks or upgrades have had the desired outcome. They also show you results when compared to other users of the same ISP and other ISPs in your province, across your country and world. Also be sure to check out the collection of data about world results. Canada is not looking so good at 36th position for download speed and 40th for upload. When compared to Korea’s 20+ Mbits/sec download speed we seem to have a lot of catching up to do in North America.
UPDATED: 2018/12/17
Somewhat entertaining to see how the rates I mentioned nearly 10 years ago are now considered low-end speeds. Canada has made a big jump in the rankings, moving up to 16th spot. Singapore takes the top spot with a speed 185.25 Mbps. Can’t imagine what speeds we will see in another 10 years.
I was contacted by another broadband test provider about their speed test. It has a less commercial feel to it, a simple interface and gave similar results to what I was seeing on SpeedTest.net. The nice thing about this test is that every test done raises 1 cent to two foundations doing great work in the tech space, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Computers 4 Africa. Nice way to do something positive while checking your broadband connection, go check out
There has also been a trend in routers now including daily speed tests. Our Google Wifi Mesh Router monitors both the LAN mesh side of the network along with a daily WAN speed test. All displayed in a nice chart on the Google Wifi App.