{"id":26854,"date":"2023-09-17T10:55:22","date_gmt":"2023-09-17T14:55:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/?p=26854"},"modified":"2023-09-17T18:28:08","modified_gmt":"2023-09-17T22:28:08","slug":"everything-youve-ever-wanted-to-know-about-your-internet-connection-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/everything-youve-ever-wanted-to-know-about-your-internet-connection-and-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Your Internet Connection and More"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Your Internet Connection and More
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There are dozens of sites where you can check your internet connection speed. Heck, there may even be a hundred of them of them and they all do the same thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

The other day I happened upon an internet speed test site that not only showed my connection speed it also showed me things about my connection I never saw before. Things about internet connection quality, jitter, latency, and other arcane things I knew little about but which affect the quality of my internet connection.
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Speed is important but the quality of your connection is important too!<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Most of us know that internet connection speed matters. But let’s take a look at internet connection quality and how it affects performance.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have two laptops, almost side by side in the same room. One shows a speed of over 400 Mbps (megabits per second). The other, newer laptop, shows a connection speed of 138Mbps. I assumed that because the wireless card in the newer El Cheapo was not as good as the wireless card in the older El Cheapo, I was going to have either to get a better wireless card for the newer laptop or else settle for 138-140 Mbps as my top speed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong, 138 Mbps is good enough for everything I do. I can stream Netflix, Prime, Tubi TV, Pluto TV, etc. I don’t do any gaming so I don’t know how I’d do with that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our site pick today is a speed test that not only tests the speed of your connection, it also tests the quality of your connection. Just because your internet connection speed is fast, does not mean your connection is a high-quality connection. <\/span><\/p>\n

This speed test gives you a network quality score and tells you how good your connection is for Video Streaming, Online Gaming, and Video Chatting.<\/span><\/p>\n

It says that despite my older laptop showing a speed of 410 Mbps (download) and the new one showing a speed of 138 Mbps (download) the quality of the connections is virtually the same.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Everything<\/span><\/p>\n

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As you can see from the above screenshots, the network quality of my connection is the same. Both connections are good for video streaming and video chatting and average for online gaming.\u00a0 That’s despite one appearing to show a download speed of 415 Mbps and one showing a download speed of 138 Mbps. And I can honestly say, I don’t notice any difference in my internet connection when switching between the two laptops.
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Quality counts<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Many things can affect the quality of your internet connection. And this site can help you understand things like Latency, Jitter, and Packet Loss.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Everything<\/span><\/p>\n

You can learn more about each when you hover over the “i” when you’re checking your speed on the site. Let’s take a look at Jitter…<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Everything<\/span><\/p>\n

RTT is an acronym for “Round-trip time”. In networking, it is the time it takes to get a response after you initiate a network request.<\/span><\/p>\n

You probably don’t care about all those technical details but I’m pretty certain you are surprised to know that internet connection speed isn’t the only thing that matters. Like many other things in life, quality matters.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cloudflare calls its internet quality test “Aggregated Internet Measurement” and explains it this way…
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Aggregated Internet Measurement (AIM) helps you understand your Internet quality to identify scenarios that your Internet connection is good or bad for. Typically, an Internet speed test provides you with upload and download speeds, which may not always provide a holistic view of your Internet quality.<\/span><\/p>\n

AIM uses a scoring rubric that assigns point values based on speed tests to help you understand how your Internet quality will perform for streaming, gaming, and webchat\/real-time communication (RTC).<\/span>
\n\u200b\u200b<\/span>
\nScoring Rubric<\/span><\/p>\n

AIM analyzes the following metrics to generate your score:<\/span><\/p>\n

Latency<\/span>
\nPacket Loss<\/span>
\nDownload<\/span>
\nUpload<\/span>
\nLoaded Latency<\/span>
\nJitter<\/span><\/p>\n

After the test is run and a point value is assigned to each metric, the points are translated to a network score for streaming, gaming, and webchat\/RTC. These scores will indicate how good your Internet is in each of these scenarios.<\/span><\/p>\n

The possible network scores are:<\/span><\/p>\n

Bad<\/span>
\nPoor<\/span>
\nAverage<\/span>
\nGood<\/span>
\nGreat<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Our site pick today is Cloudflare’s Internet Speed Test.<\/a><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

We’ll let Cloudflare tell you a bit more about their speed test site…<\/span><\/p>\n

…speed.cloudflare.com is a tool that allows you to measure the speed and consistency of your connection to the Internet. You can use it to verify that the speed your ISP promised you is the speed you are getting, compare different ISPs or test network connectivity in different parts of your house.<\/span><\/p>\n

The measurements run on the Cloudflare network, which spans data centers in over 300+ cities worldwide. This ensures you are testing against a server that is close to you, which means you are measuring only the speed of your ISP, with minimal networks in between that may impact your score.<\/span><\/p>\n

…Why build another speed test tool?<\/span><\/p>\n

There are many speed test tools out there. Our mission is to help build a better Internet. To do so, we believe in giving users a choice of different services: you shouldn\u2019t be tied to one provider and you should be able to compare results across different tools…<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, there’s more to your internet connection than speed. And while speed matters, quality matters too. How well does your connection handle:<\/span><\/p>\n