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Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test
2023-01-01
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Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test
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https://www.att.com/support/speedtest/
Internet Speed Test – AT&T Official Site
2023-02-28
None
<div><div><p><a href="https://www.att.com/">Home </a><a href="/support/"> Support </a><a href="/support/speedtest/"> Speedtest </a></p><p></p><h2>Internet speed tests</h2><h2>Check the upload and download speeds of your connected devices or AT&amp;T Wi-Fi gateway.</h2><p></p></div></div>||||I|||| Find a storeVer en español
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 Start of main content
 Home Support Speedtest

 Internet speed tests

 Check the upload and download speeds of your connected devices or AT&T Wi-Fi gateway.

 Want better internet speed?

 Try these tips
 Improve your connection
 Fix internet issues
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 Find internet deals
 See latest deals
Find a storeVer en español
 Skip Navigation
 Menu
 Deals Wireless Internet Accessories TV Prepaid Business
 Search
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 Start of main content
 Home Support Speedtest
 Internet speed tests
 Check the upload and download speeds of your connected devices or AT&T Wi-Fi gateway.
 Want better internet speed?
 Try these tips
 Improve your connection
 Fix internet issues
 Explore help options
 Check upgrade options
 See plans in your area
 Find internet deals
 See latest deals
Internet Speed Test – AT&T Official Site
https://www.att.com/support/speedtest/
https://www.spectrum.com/internet/speed-test
Internet & WiFi Speed Test - Spectrum
2023-01-24
Charter Communications
<div><div>
 
 <div>
 <h3>Restrictions Apply</h3>
 <p>Service not available in all areas. Per line activation fee, Spectrum Internet and Auto Pay required. Other restrictions apply. Visit <a href="https://www.spectrum.com/mobile/plans">spectrum.com/mobile/plans</a> for details.</p>
 </div>
 
 <div>
 <h3>Conditions Apply</h3>
 <p>Savings based on single-line comparison of unlimited plans among major nat’l carriers as of
08/2022: prepaid excl: data usage limits vary by carrier.</p>
 </div>
 
 <div>
 <h3>Offer Details</h3>
 <p>Offer valid for new customers adding lines or for current mobile customers adding Unlimited lines to existing service. Unlimited: Reduced speeds after 20 GB of usage per line. Unlimited Plus: Reduced speeds after 30 GB of usage per line. Visit <a href="https://spectrum.com/mobile/plans">spectrum.com/mobile/plans</a> for details.</p>
 </div>
 
 <div>
 <h3>Offer Details</h3>
 <p>Limited time offer; subject to change; valid to qualified residential customers who have not subscribed to any services within the previous 30 days and who have no outstanding obligation to Charter. Spectrum Internet promotion price is $49.99/mo; standard rates apply after yr 1. Spectrum TV Select promotion price is $59.99/mo; standard rates apply after yr 1. Taxes, fees and surcharges (broadcast surcharge up to $22.20/mo) extra and subject to change during and after the promotional period; installation/network activation, equipment and additional services are extra. General Terms: INTERNET: Speed based on wired connection and may vary by address. Wireless speeds may vary. TV: TV equipment required, charges may apply. Channel and HD programming availability based on level of service and location. Account credentials may be required to stream some TV content online. Services subject to all applicable service terms and conditions, subject to change. Services not available in all areas. Restrictions apply. Enter your address to determine availability.</p>
 </div>
 
 <div>
 <h3>Performance Details</h3>
 <p>Speed based on wired connection. Actual speeds may vary. Gig capable modem required for Gig speed. For a list of Gig capable modems, visit spectrum.net/modem.</p>
 </div>
 
 <div>
 <h3>Offer Details</h3>
 <p>Limited time offer; subject to change; valid to qualified residential customers who have not subscribed to any services within the previous 30 days and have no outstanding obligations to Charter. Services are subject to all applicable service terms and conditions, subject to change. Services not available in all areas. Restrictions apply. INTERNET &amp; ADVANCED WIFI: Standard rates for Internet and Advanced WiFi apply after yr 1. Standard rates apply for Internet, WiFi, and Mobile if Mobile line is not activated within 30 days and maintained through the promo period. Equipment may be extra; installation and additional services are extra. Speed based on wired connection. Actual speeds may vary. SPECTRUM MOBILE: Service not available in all areas. Spectrum Internet and Auto Pay required. Other restrictions apply. Visit spectrum.com/mobile/plans for details. UNLIMITED: Standard rates apply after yr 1. Smartwatch does not qualify as a line. Reduced speeds after 20 GB of usage per line. UNLIMITED PLUS: Customer opt-in to Mobile Unlimited Plus will be required to pay additional $10 monthly rate for that service. Smartwatch does not qualify as a line. Reduced speeds after 30 GB of usage per line. To access 5G, 5G compatible phone and 5G service required. Not all 5G capable phones compatible with all 5G service. Speeds may vary. Visit spectrum.com/mobile/5g for details.</p>
 </div>
 
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 Internet Speed Test

 Use the Internet speed test to see how your current Internet or WiFi connection measures up. Results may vary based on device capabilities, number of connected devices and router placement. If your WiFi speed is lower than expected, try moving closer to your router or checking your internet speed with another device.

 Already a Spectrum Internet® customer? Click here.

 Internet + Advanced WiFi + Mobile – all included for $49.99/mo. Get offer

 Understanding Your Speed Test Results

 Mbps vs. Gbps

 Megabits and gigabits per second show how fast you can stream movies or upload and download files.

 Download Speed

 Download speed refers to how fast data can be transferred from the Internet to your computer in a second.

 Upload Speed

 Upload speed refers to how fast data can be transferred from your computer to the Internet in a second.

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 Frequently Asked Questions

 What is a good speed for Internet?

 A good Internet speed provides at least 25 Mbps download speed and 3 Mbps upload speed. However, we recommend a starting download speed of 100 Mbps and upload speed of 10 Mbps for households with several users connected on multiple devices at the same time – so that you can surf, stream, game and make video calls. The more speed you have, the faster your connection. If you want more bandwidth to share amongst more users and power more devices, upgrade your Internet speed.

 What impacts or slows down my download and upload speeds?

 There are a handful of factors that could impact or slow down your download and upload speeds:

 If your computer is older or out of date, it may affect your transfer rate. Try checking to see if your computer requires updating.

 Check your wireless connection. Walls, radios, or increased distance from your router might be causing WiFi interference. Try getting closer to your router or plugging it in directly.

 For further support troubleshooting your Internet connection, click here.

 What to do if my internet speed is slow?

 Slow internet speed could be caused by an outdated router or a router placed too far away from your TV or computer. However, if your internet speed is slower than you would like, you can consider a faster speed option, such as Spectrum Internet Ultra or Spectrum Internet Gig.

 Why does internet speed matter?

 Internet speed determines what types of activities you can do on the internet. Videos, games and video calls all rely on faster internet speeds.

 How are coverage and internet speed related?

 Good coverage means your device is getting a strong WiFi signal. That strong signal will also deliver as much speed as your device can handle. As you move away from your router, signal strength diminishes, slowing upload/download speeds and reducing coverage. The placement of your router is key to ensuring both coverage and speed for your devices.

 Restrictions Apply

 Service not available in all areas. Per line activation fee, Spectrum Internet and Auto Pay required. Other restrictions apply. Visit spectrum.com/mobile/plans for details.

 Conditions Apply

 Savings based on single-line comparison of unlimited plans among major nat’l carriers as of 08/2022: prepaid excl: data usage limits vary by carrier.

 Offer Details

 Offer valid for new customers adding lines or for current mobile customers adding Unlimited lines to existing service. Unlimited: Reduced speeds after 20 GB of usage per line. Unlimited Plus: Reduced speeds after 30 GB of usage per line. Visit spectrum.com/mobile/plans for details.

 Offer Details

 Limited time offer; subject to change; valid to qualified residential customers who have not subscribed to any services within the previous 30 days and who have no outstanding obligation to Charter. Spectrum Internet promotion price is $49.99/mo; standard rates apply after yr 1. Spectrum TV Select promotion price is $59.99/mo; standard rates apply after yr 1. Taxes, fees and surcharges (broadcast surcharge up to $22.20/mo) extra and subject to change during and after the promotional period; installation/network activation, equipment and additional services are extra. General Terms: INTERNET: Speed based on wired connection and may vary by address. Wireless speeds may vary. TV: TV equipment required, charges may apply. Channel and HD programming availability based on level of service and location. Account credentials may be required to stream some TV content online. Services subject to all applicable service terms and conditions, subject to change. Services not available in all areas. Restrictions apply. Enter your address to determine availability.

 Performance Details

 Speed based on wired connection. Actual speeds may vary. Gig capable modem required for Gig speed. For a list of Gig capable modems, visit spectrum.net/modem.

 Offer Details

 Limited time offer; subject to change; valid to qualified residential customers who have not subscribed to any services within the previous 30 days and have no outstanding obligations to Charter. Services are subject to all applicable service terms and conditions, subject to change. Services not available in all areas. Restrictions apply. INTERNET & ADVANCED WIFI: Standard rates for Internet and Advanced WiFi apply after yr 1. Standard rates apply for Internet, WiFi, and Mobile if Mobile line is not activated within 30 days and maintained through the promo period. Equipment may be extra; installation and additional services are extra. Speed based on wired connection. Actual speeds may vary. SPECTRUM MOBILE: Service not available in all areas. Spectrum Internet and Auto Pay required. Other restrictions apply. Visit spectrum.com/mobile/plans for details. UNLIMITED: Standard rates apply after yr 1. Smartwatch does not qualify as a line. Reduced speeds after 20 GB of usage per line. UNLIMITED PLUS: Customer opt-in to Mobile Unlimited Plus will be required to pay additional $10 monthly rate for that service. Smartwatch does not qualify as a line. Reduced speeds after 30 GB of usage per line. To access 5G, 5G compatible phone and 5G service required. Not all 5G capable phones compatible with all 5G service. Speeds may vary. Visit spectrum.com/mobile/5g for details.

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 Not all products, pricing, and services are available in all areas. Pricing and actual speeds may vary. Internet speeds based on wired connection. Restrictions apply.

 © 2023 Charter Communications. All rights reserved.

Chat With Us
Restrictions Apply
 Service not available in all areas. Per line activation fee, Spectrum Internet and Auto Pay required. Other restrictions apply. Visit spectrum.com/mobile/plans for details.
 
 
 
 Conditions Apply
 Savings based on single-line comparison of unlimited plans among major nat’l carriers as of
08/2022: prepaid excl: data usage limits vary by carrier.
 
 
 
 Offer Details
 Offer valid for new customers adding lines or for current mobile customers adding Unlimited lines to existing service. Unlimited: Reduced speeds after 20 GB of usage per line. Unlimited Plus: Reduced speeds after 30 GB of usage per line. Visit spectrum.com/mobile/plans for details.
 
 
 
 Offer Details
 Limited time offer; subject to change; valid to qualified residential customers who have not subscribed to any services within the previous 30 days and who have no outstanding obligation to Charter. Spectrum Internet promotion price is $49.99/mo; standard rates apply after yr 1. Spectrum TV Select promotion price is $59.99/mo; standard rates apply after yr 1. Taxes, fees and surcharges (broadcast surcharge up to $22.20/mo) extra and subject to change during and after the promotional period; installation/network activation, equipment and additional services are extra. General Terms: INTERNET: Speed based on wired connection and may vary by address. Wireless speeds may vary. TV: TV equipment required, charges may apply. Channel and HD programming availability based on level of service and location. Account credentials may be required to stream some TV content online. Services subject to all applicable service terms and conditions, subject to change. Services not available in all areas. Restrictions apply. Enter your address to determine availability.
 
 
 
 Performance Details
 Speed based on wired connection. Actual speeds may vary. Gig capable modem required for Gig speed. For a list of Gig capable modems, visit spectrum.net/modem.
 
 
 
 Offer Details
 Limited time offer; subject to change; valid to qualified residential customers who have not subscribed to any services within the previous 30 days and have no outstanding obligations to Charter. Services are subject to all applicable service terms and conditions, subject to change. Services not available in all areas. Restrictions apply. INTERNET &amp; ADVANCED WIFI: Standard rates for Internet and Advanced WiFi apply after yr 1. Standard rates apply for Internet, WiFi, and Mobile if Mobile line is not activated within 30 days and maintained through the promo period. Equipment may be extra; installation and additional services are extra. Speed based on wired connection. Actual speeds may vary. SPECTRUM MOBILE: Service not available in all areas. Spectrum Internet and Auto Pay required. Other restrictions apply. Visit spectrum.com/mobile/plans for details. UNLIMITED: Standard rates apply after yr 1. Smartwatch does not qualify as a line. Reduced speeds after 20 GB of usage per line. UNLIMITED PLUS: Customer opt-in to Mobile Unlimited Plus will be required to pay additional $10 monthly rate for that service. Smartwatch does not qualify as a line. Reduced speeds after 30 GB of usage per line. To access 5G, 5G compatible phone and 5G service required. Not all 5G capable phones compatible with all 5G service. Speeds may vary. Visit spectrum.com/mobile/5g for details.
Internet & WiFi Speed Test - Spectrum
https://www.spectrum.com/internet/speed-test
https://fiber.google.com/speedtest/
Internet Speed Test | Google Fiber
2023-01-01
None
<div> <section> <h2> Two simple plans. Fast and faster. </h2> <div> <div> <ul> <li>Download and upload speeds up to 1 gigabit</li> <li>Good for all your devices</li> <li>Mesh Wi-Fi network included</li> <li>No data caps or annual contracts</li> <li>No installation fees</li> <li>24/7 customer support</li> <li>1 TB of free cloud storage</li> </ul> </div> <div> <ul> <li>Download speeds of up to 2 gigabits</li> <li>Uploads up to 1 gigabit</li> <li>Wi-Fi 6 mesh network included</li> <li>Good for next-gen devices and tech-savvy households</li> <li>1 TB of free cloud storage</li> <li>No data caps or annual contracts</li> <li>Professional installation included</li> <li>24/7 customer support</li> </ul> </div> </div> </section> <div> <div> <p>Download speed measures how fast information can transfer to you. It affects things like how long it takes to download large files, update games, or show pages with lots of photos. Download speed is measured in megabits per second (Mbps). One gigabit is 1000 Mbps, two gigabits is 2000 Mbps.</p> </div> <div> <p>Upload speed measures how fast information can transfer from you. It affects things like how you appear on video calls, how fast you can upload files to the cloud, and how long it takes to add attachments to emails. Upload speed is measured in megabits per second (Mbps).</p> </div> <div> <p>When you get 1 or 2 Gig internet, your internet speeds have the capability of 1000-2000 Mbps. How fast you go depends on how youâre connected to the internet. For instance, Wi-Fi is slower than a direct connection via Ethernet. Additionally, your device, ethernet adapter, or Wi-Fi card may have a lower maximum speed than your router or internet connection.</p> </div> <div> <p>Ping measures how quickly your device gets a response from a server. A low ping score is better, especially in applications where timing is everything â like online gaming or livestreaming. Ping is measured in milliseconds (ms).</p> </div> <div> <p>Jitter measures the fluctuations in the speeds at which a stream of data is sent. A high jitter score can affect streaming and video calls, making them look and sound choppy or glitchy. Jitter is measured in milliseconds (ms).</p> </div> <div> <p>An IP address is the series of numbers that identifies your personal network to the outside world. Just like packages you order are sent to your home address, data you request is sent to your IP address. Just like your home address, phone number, or license plate number, this information is sensitive and shouldnât be shared publicly.</p> </div> </div> ||||I|||| Check availability Fiber account
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Google Fiber
Speed Test

Two simple plans. Fast and faster.

 1 Gig

 * Download and upload speeds up to 1 gigabit
 * Good for all your devices
 * Mesh Wi-Fi network included
 * No data caps or annual contracts
 * No installation fees
 * 24/7 customer support
 * 1 TB of free cloud storage
 Check availability
 See full tech specs

 Technical Specifications

 Specifications 1 Gig 2 Gig 
 Download speed up to 1 gigabit per second 2 gigabits per second 
 Upload speed up to 1 gigabit per second 1 gigabit per second 
 Time to download a 2.5 hour movie 56.9 seconds 28.5 seconds 
 (1080p, 6Mbps encoding)  
 Time to download a 2.5 hour movie 2.4 minutes 1.2 minutes 
 (4K, 15Mbps encoding)  
 Time to download 30 5-minute songs 1.8 seconds .9 seconds 
 (MP3@190kbps)  
 Time to download a 10GB game 1.5 minutes 42.2 seconds 
 Included equipment 1 Gig comes with Google Wifi , or you can use your own router . Wi-Fi 6 Router, Tri-band Mesh Extender
 

 2 Gig

 * Download speeds of up to 2 gigabits
 * Uploads up to 1 gigabit
 * Wi-Fi 6 mesh network included
 * Good for next-gen devices and tech-savvy households
 * 1 TB of free cloud storage
 * No data caps or annual contracts
 * Professional installation included
 * 24/7 customer support
 Check availability
 See full tech specs

 Technical Specifications

 Specifications 1 Gig 2 Gig 
 Download speed up to 1 gigabit per second 2 gigabits per second 
 Upload speed up to 1 gigabit per second 1 gigabit per second 
 Time to download a 2.5 hour movie 56.9 seconds 28.5 seconds 
 (1080p, 6Mbps encoding)  
 Time to download a 2.5 hour movie 2.4 minutes 1.2 minutes 
 (4K, 15Mbps encoding)  
 Time to download 30 5-minute songs 1.8 seconds .9 seconds 
 (MP3@190kbps)  
 Time to download a 10GB game 1.5 minutes 42.2 seconds 
 Included equipment 1 Gig comes with Google Wifi , or you can use your own router . Wi-Fi 6 Router, Tri-band Mesh Extender
 

 FAQs

 Expand all Collapse all

 Download speed

 Download speed measures how fast information can transfer to you. It affects things like how long it takes to download large files, update games, or show pages with lots of photos. Download speed is measured in megabits per second (Mbps). One gigabit is 1000 Mbps, two gigabits is 2000 Mbps.

 Upload speed

 Upload speed measures how fast information can transfer from you. It affects things like how you appear on video calls, how fast you can upload files to the cloud, and how long it takes to add attachments to emails. Upload speed is measured in megabits per second (Mbps).

 Speeds to expect

 When you get 1 or 2 Gig internet, your internet speeds have the capability of 1000-2000 Mbps. How fast you go depends on how youâre connected to the internet. For instance, Wi-Fi is slower than a direct connection via Ethernet. Additionally, your device, ethernet adapter, or Wi-Fi card may have a lower maximum speed than your router or internet connection.

 Ping

 Ping measures how quickly your device gets a response from a server. A low ping score is better, especially in applications where timing is everything â like online gaming or livestreaming. Ping is measured in milliseconds (ms).

 Jitter

 Jitter measures the fluctuations in the speeds at which a stream of data is sent. A high jitter score can affect streaming and video calls, making them look and sound choppy or glitchy. Jitter is measured in milliseconds (ms).

 IP Address

 An IP address is the series of numbers that identifies your personal network to the outside world. Just like packages you order are sent to your home address, data you request is sent to your IP address. Just like your home address, phone number, or license plate number, this information is sensitive and shouldnât be shared publicly.

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 1: Plus taxes and fees. Upload/download speed and device streaming claims are based on maximum wired speeds. Actual Internet speeds are not guaranteed and may vary based on factors such as hardware and software limitations, latency, packet loss, etc. See what affects internet speeds.

 Â© 2023 Google Fiber Inc. | 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View, CA 94043

Two simple plans. Fast and faster.     Download and upload speeds up to 1 gigabit Good for all your devices Mesh Wi-Fi network included No data caps or annual contracts No installation fees 24/7 customer support 1 TB of free cloud storage     Download speeds of up to 2 gigabits Uploads up to 1 gigabit Wi-Fi 6 mesh network included Good for next-gen devices and tech-savvy households 1 TB of free cloud storage No data caps or annual contracts Professional installation included 24/7 customer support       Download speed measures how fast information can transfer to you. It affects things like how long it takes to download large files, update games, or show pages with lots of photos. Download speed is measured in megabits per second (Mbps). One gigabit is 1000 Mbps, two gigabits is 2000 Mbps.   Upload speed measures how fast information can transfer from you. It affects things like how you appear on video calls, how fast you can upload files to the cloud, and how long it takes to add attachments to emails. Upload speed is measured in megabits per second (Mbps).   When you get 1 or 2 Gig internet, your internet speeds have the capability of 1000-2000 Mbps. How fast you go depends on how youâre connected to the internet. For instance, Wi-Fi is slower than a direct connection via Ethernet. Additionally, your device, ethernet adapter, or Wi-Fi card may have a lower maximum speed than your router or internet connection.   Ping measures how quickly your device gets a response from a server. A low ping score is better, especially in applications where timing is everything â like online gaming or livestreaming. Ping is measured in milliseconds (ms).   Jitter measures the fluctuations in the speeds at which a stream of data is sent. A high jitter score can affect streaming and video calls, making them look and sound choppy or glitchy. Jitter is measured in milliseconds (ms).   An IP address is the series of numbers that identifies your personal network to the outside world. Just like packages you order are sent to your home address, data you request is sent to your IP address. Just like your home address, phone number, or license plate number, this information is sensitive and shouldnât be shared publicly.
Internet Speed Test | Google Fiber
https://fiber.google.com/speedtest/
http://ping-test.net/mobile/speed_test
Speed test
2017-01-01
None
<div><div>
 <h2>How does this speed test work?</h2>
 <p>This <strong>speed test</strong> uses WebSocket technology for accurate measuring your real Internet connection speed.
 The best server is automatically selected when you start the test. The following parameters
 are measured when the test is run:</p>
 <p><strong>PING (or LATENCY)</strong> - the network delays in milliseconds [ms] when the data is sent between your computer and the Internet. This is the
 most important parameter when we are talking about online games or calls. Latency time strongly depends on distance between you and the reference server. The
 longer distance, the bigger latency value is expected. Typical ping values in domestic networks should not exceed 50 ms. But for example at the distance between
 United States and Europe the ping value may be between 100 and 150 ms.</p>
 <p><strong>DOWNLOAD</strong> - the data getting speed from the Internet measured as amount of data divided by the time of data sending and shown in Mega Bytes per
 second (Mb/s, Mbps). The download speed depends is measured using TCP (WebSocket) procol so it depends on network latency. In other words, if the ping value is biger
 the connection will reach its maximum throughput in a longer time.</p>
 <p><strong>UPLOAD</strong> - the data sending speed to the Internet measured in the same way as in case of download and shown also in Mb/s.</p>
</div>||||I|||| Home Speed Test Full site Internet Speed Test for Android OS Speed Test Light for Android OS Internet Speed Test for iOS Write E-mail Facebook Privacy policy
US▾
 We suggest to select nearest country
 Polska - test szybkości łącza - speed test
 India - speed test Россия - скорость интернета España - test de velocidad Philippines - speed test Portugal, Brasil - Teste de Velocidade United Kingdom - speed test México - test de velocidad

 Speed Test

 START
 Searching for the best server...
 IP: ...
 provider: ...
 powered by: FIREPROBE.NET
 Testing:
 Ping
 ...
 Mb/s
 Download:
 ... Mb/s
 Upload:
 ... Mb/s
 Ping:
 ... ms
 Jitter:
 ... ms
 RESTART SHARE
 SELECT SERVER

 WEB BROWSING: 5 / 5
 VIDEO STREAMING (LQ): 5 / 5
 VIDEO STREAMING (HQ): 5 / 5
 CALLS (SKYPE, WHATSAPP): 5 / 5
 ONLINE GAMES: 5 / 5

 How does this speed test work?

 This speed test uses WebSocket technology for accurate measuring your real Internet connection speed. The best server is automatically selected when you start the test. The following parameters are measured when the test is run:

 PING (or LATENCY) - the network delays in milliseconds [ms] when the data is sent between your computer and the Internet. This is the most important parameter when we are talking about online games or calls. Latency time strongly depends on distance between you and the reference server. The longer distance, the bigger latency value is expected. Typical ping values in domestic networks should not exceed 50 ms. But for example at the distance between United States and Europe the ping value may be between 100 and 150 ms.

 DOWNLOAD - the data getting speed from the Internet measured as amount of data divided by the time of data sending and shown in Mega Bytes per second (Mb/s, Mbps). The download speed depends is measured using TCP (WebSocket) procol so it depends on network latency. In other words, if the ping value is biger the connection will reach its maximum throughput in a longer time.

 UPLOAD - the data sending speed to the Internet measured in the same way as in case of download and shown also in Mb/s.

 Speed test - ping-test.net © 2009-2017
How does this speed test work?
 This speed test uses WebSocket technology for accurate measuring your real Internet connection speed.
 The best server is automatically selected when you start the test. The following parameters
 are measured when the test is run:
  PING (or LATENCY) - the network delays in milliseconds [ms] when the data is sent between your computer and the Internet. This is the
 most important parameter when we are talking about online games or calls. Latency time strongly depends on distance between you and the reference server. The
 longer distance, the bigger latency value is expected. Typical ping values in domestic networks should not exceed 50 ms. But for example at the distance between
 United States and Europe the ping value may be between 100 and 150 ms.
  DOWNLOAD - the data getting speed from the Internet measured as amount of data divided by the time of data sending and shown in Mega Bytes per
 second (Mb/s, Mbps). The download speed depends is measured using TCP (WebSocket) procol so it depends on network latency. In other words, if the ping value is biger
 the connection will reach its maximum throughput in a longer time.
  UPLOAD - the data sending speed to the Internet measured in the same way as in case of download and shown also in Mb/s.
Speed test
http://ping-test.net/mobile/speed_test
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-internet-speed-tests/
The Easiest Internet Speed Tests for Testing Your Connection
2023-09-20
Mark Coppock
<div><div>
<header>
<div>
<ol><li>
<a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/">
</a>
</li><li><a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/"></a></li><li><a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing-products/"></a></li></ol> </div>
</header>
<article>
<p>Whether you’re struggling with lagging internet speeds or curious to know how your internet provider stacks up, it’s impossible to know just how fast your internet speed is without using a precise test. Top-quality internet speed tests can clear up any confusion quickly and easily. But you’ll need to know what the best internet speed tests are out there; we’ll help you with that. Check out the following internet speed tests to learn more about your upload and download speeds, as well as other exciting information about your <a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-wi-fi-6-routers/">internet connection</a>.</p>
<h2><a href=""></a>SpeedOf.Me</h2>
<figure><figcaption></figcaption></figure>
<p><a href="https://speedof.me/">SpeedOf.Me</a> is an HTML5-based speed test that’s lightweight and designed to replicate real-world browsing and downloading conditions — it does so by requesting a series of files of increasing sizes and recording the download speed. The test tracks real-time info on downloads, uploads, latency, and other info like your IP address, server location, and more. You also have a history section to easily compare your tests to chart changes and a share section to share on Facebook or Twitter.</p>
<p>Rather than selecting a location, the website calculates the quickest and most reliable server from 127 available servers. All files are downloaded and uploaded in sequence — rather than simultaneously — to imitate real internet browsing conditions. It’s not only the prettiest speed test around, but it also provides the best data and features for a single visit. The site does require you to accept cookies before beginning, but some of our other picks do not.</p>
<h2><a href=""></a>TestMy.net</h2>
<figure><figcaption></figcaption></figure>
<p>If you’re looking for a test that offers more data than the average speed test, <a href="https://testmy.net/">TestMy.net</a> runs a series of examinations and provides useful comparison data. You will have options for testing download, upload, combined, or just latency when you first begin. Choose what you are interested in, and the test will automatically run — then, it’ll provide you with detailed charts on exactly how you performed.</p>
<p>The test can also show how speeds compare to others in your city, the world average, the U.S. average, and so on. Results can be saved for future use as well. If these numbers are a little unfamiliar to you, there’s also plenty of documentation and easy-to-understand guides that can help you better identify what the problem is with your <a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-wireless-routers/">internet connection</a>.</p>
<h2><a href=""></a>Speedtest.net</h2>
<figure><figcaption></figcaption></figure>
<p><a href="https://www.speedtest.net/">Ookla’s bandwidth diagnostic software</a> shows up on many other speed test sites listed here, but the most full-featured iteration of the test is on Speedtest.net, which is owned by Ookla. The tech used here is both intelligent and speedy. It picks a nearby server (out of a list of more than 1,000), runs a full test, and returns information on upload and download speed, latency, and packet loss.</p>
<p>You can fill out a survey after the test, answering questions about your ISP’s claimed speed and monthly connection costs. This survey <a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/ookla-speedtest-q2-2017/">allows Ookla to amass an impressive database</a> of consumer connection information, viewed and broken down by region — <a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/web/internet-speeds-differ-in-us/">in the U.S., there are significant internet speed</a> variables on its NetIndex site.</p>
<h2><a href=""></a>Fast.com</h2>
<figure><figcaption></figcaption></figure>
<p><a href="https://fast.com/">Fast.com</a> is an online speed test from Netflix. The site uses a simple interface and launches a speed test automatically. When the test is over, the site will display your current speed in Mbps.</p>
<p>Of course, Netflix mainly intends this for people who want to test if their current speed can handle <a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/web/netflix-4k-streaming-windows-10-microsoft-edge-kaby-lake-requirement/">Netflix content, especially high-def and 4K (even on your PC)</a> content, which may benefit more from higher download speeds. You don’t have to use the test to determine if you can stream content from Netflix without buffering. We recommend this test if you want a fast and reliable option and don’t need additional latency data information.</p>
<p>The test allows users to choose a variety of language options. To access this feature, choose the <i>Show More Info</i> option after the test to display these extra details.</p>
<p><a href="https://fast.com/">Try Fast.com</a></p>
<h2><a href=""></a>Google Fiber Speedtest</h2>
<figure><figcaption></figcaption></figure>
<p>Google offers a free, quick, and accurate <a href="https://fiber.google.com/speedtest/">Fiber Speedtest</a> for anyone looking to test browser speed. You don’t have to subscribe to Google’s Fiber service, either. Google is known for efficiency and simplicity so you can trust the Fiber Speedtest will perform.</p>
<p>The test only takes up to 15 seconds and is extremely accurate. You’ll receive information on upload speed, download, and ping data.</p>
<p>The Fiber Speedtest can also tell you what server you’re using, along with other information. You can also find out how your internet speed compares with Google Fiber’s speeds.</p>
<h2><a href=""></a>Test your speed using Google’s search results speed test</h2>
<figure><figcaption></figcaption></figure>
<p>In partnership with Measurement Lab (M-Lab), Google also offers an internet speed test that you can access via its search engine. All you have to do is go to <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=internet+speed+test">Google.com and type the phrase “internet speed test”</a> into its search box. You’ll then be taken to a search results page that features the speed test at the top of the page. Then you’ll click on the blue <em>Run Speed Test</em> button to start the test. In less than a minute, this test will measure download speed, upload speed, and latency.</p>
<h4>
	Editors' Recommendations</h4>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-graphics-cards/">
	Best graphics cards 2023: finding the best GPU for gaming	</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/best-tablets/">
	The best tablets in 2023: top 11 tablets you can buy now	</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-computer-monitors/">
	9 best monitors for 2023: tested and reviewed	</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-processors-any-budget/">
	The best processors in 2023: AMD and Intel CPUs duke it out	</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-intel-processors/">
	The best Intel processors for 2023	</a>
</li>
</ul>
</article>
<section>
<p> </p>
<p>
	Mark has been a geek since MS-DOS gave way to Windows and the PalmPilot was a thing. He’s translated his love for…	</p>
</section>
<div>
<div>
<p> </p>
<div>
<p>With Apple's introduction of the latest M2 MacBook models, it's time to take another look at which is the best MacBook to buy in 2023. That's not always easy, though, as buying the newest MacBook isn't always the right decision. Apple has several tiers of performance, as well as various sizes, which can complicate the matter.</p>
<p>There are several MacBook models available, designated MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, with varying memory and storage configurations, as well as four kinds of processors, providing a wide selection to choose from.</p> </div>
<p><a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-macbooks/">
	Read more	</a>
</p></div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/">
</a>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p>
	The best all-in-one computers for 2023	</p>
</div>
<p> </p>
<div>
<p>All-in-one computers provide everything your average consumer might need in a single package, nixing the need for a standalone desktop in favor of a monitor-toting piece of PC hardware. They come in an array of styles, offering everything from 1080p touchscreens and 5K resolution to robust sound and high-end Intel Core processors. Each also typically comes bundled with a keyboard and mouse.</p>
<p>Most target the premium market with a sleek, streamlined design, yet recent offerings continue to push the boundaries of a what a budget-based PC is capable of. Consumers pay for this style and convenience in terms of performance, and while the best all-in-one computers don't pack the processors or video cards some enthusiasts demand, they're efficient enough for most everyday tasks.</p> </div>
<p><a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-all-in-one-computers/">
	Read more	</a>
</p></div>
<div>
<p> </p>
<div>
<p>The 2-in-1 form factor has certainly come into its own over the last several years. There's really no reason to limit yourself to a clamshell, as there's a 2-in-1 that will meet the needs of all but the most demanding users in terms of sheer performance.</p>
<p>We've reviewed every great 2-in-1 you can buy, including Chromebooks, convertibles, and powerful 15-inch versions. The overall best 2-in-1 at the moment is the Microsoft Surface Pro 9, with its fantastic keyboard that's as easy to remove as it is to type on, plus its 120Hz display and haptic-enabled pen. It's almost as good a laptop as it is a tablet, which is what makes it the best overall 2-in-1. test</p> </div>
<p><a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-2-in-1-laptops/">
	Read more	</a>
</p></div>
</div>
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 1. Home
 2. Computing
 3. Products

 The best internet speed tests

 By Mark Coppock September 20, 2023
 Share

 Whether you’re struggling with lagging internet speeds or curious to know how your internet provider stacks up, it’s impossible to know just how fast your internet speed is without using a precise test. Top-quality internet speed tests can clear up any confusion quickly and easily. But you’ll need to know what the best internet speed tests are out there; we’ll help you with that. Check out the following internet speed tests to learn more about your upload and download speeds, as well as other exciting information about your internet connection.

 SpeedOf.Me

 Image used with permission by copyright holder

 SpeedOf.Me is an HTML5-based speed test that’s lightweight and designed to replicate real-world browsing and downloading conditions — it does so by requesting a series of files of increasing sizes and recording the download speed. The test tracks real-time info on downloads, uploads, latency, and other info like your IP address, server location, and more. You also have a history section to easily compare your tests to chart changes and a share section to share on Facebook or Twitter.

 Rather than selecting a location, the website calculates the quickest and most reliable server from 127 available servers. All files are downloaded and uploaded in sequence — rather than simultaneously — to imitate real internet browsing conditions. It’s not only the prettiest speed test around, but it also provides the best data and features for a single visit. The site does require you to accept cookies before beginning, but some of our other picks do not.

 Related
 * 10 best laptops of 2023: tested and reviewed
 * These are the best ultrawide monitors you buy in 2023
 * The best 17-inch laptops

 TestMy.net

 Image used with permission by copyright holder

 If you’re looking for a test that offers more data than the average speed test, TestMy.net runs a series of examinations and provides useful comparison data. You will have options for testing download, upload, combined, or just latency when you first begin. Choose what you are interested in, and the test will automatically run — then, it’ll provide you with detailed charts on exactly how you performed.

 The test can also show how speeds compare to others in your city, the world average, the U.S. average, and so on. Results can be saved for future use as well. If these numbers are a little unfamiliar to you, there’s also plenty of documentation and easy-to-understand guides that can help you better identify what the problem is with your internet connection.

 Speedtest.net

 Image used with permission by copyright holder

 Ookla’s bandwidth diagnostic software shows up on many other speed test sites listed here, but the most full-featured iteration of the test is on Speedtest.net, which is owned by Ookla. The tech used here is both intelligent and speedy. It picks a nearby server (out of a list of more than 1,000), runs a full test, and returns information on upload and download speed, latency, and packet loss.

 You can fill out a survey after the test, answering questions about your ISP’s claimed speed and monthly connection costs. This survey allows Ookla to amass an impressive database of consumer connection information, viewed and broken down by region — in the U.S., there are significant internet speed variables on its NetIndex site.

 Fast.com

 Image used with permission by copyright holder

 Fast.com is an online speed test from Netflix. The site uses a simple interface and launches a speed test automatically. When the test is over, the site will display your current speed in Mbps.

 Of course, Netflix mainly intends this for people who want to test if their current speed can handle Netflix content, especially high-def and 4K (even on your PC) content, which may benefit more from higher download speeds. You don’t have to use the test to determine if you can stream content from Netflix without buffering. We recommend this test if you want a fast and reliable option and don’t need additional latency data information.

 The test allows users to choose a variety of language options. To access this feature, choose the Show More Info option after the test to display these extra details.

 Try Fast.com

 Google Fiber Speedtest

 Image used with permission by copyright holder

 Google offers a free, quick, and accurate Fiber Speedtest for anyone looking to test browser speed. You don’t have to subscribe to Google’s Fiber service, either. Google is known for efficiency and simplicity so you can trust the Fiber Speedtest will perform.

 The test only takes up to 15 seconds and is extremely accurate. You’ll receive information on upload speed, download, and ping data.

 The Fiber Speedtest can also tell you what server you’re using, along with other information. You can also find out how your internet speed compares with Google Fiber’s speeds.

 Test your speed using Google’s search results speed test

 screenshot

 In partnership with Measurement Lab (M-Lab), Google also offers an internet speed test that you can access via its search engine. All you have to do is go to Google.com and type the phrase “internet speed test” into its search box. You’ll then be taken to a search results page that features the speed test at the top of the page. Then you’ll click on the blue Run Speed Test button to start the test. In less than a minute, this test will measure download speed, upload speed, and latency.

 Editors' Recommendations

 * Best graphics cards 2023: finding the best GPU for gaming
 * The best tablets in 2023: top 11 tablets you can buy now
 * 9 best monitors for 2023: tested and reviewed
 * The best processors in 2023: AMD and Intel CPUs duke it out
 * The best Intel processors for 2023
 Topics
 * Best Products
 Mark Coppock
 Computing Writer
 linkedin twitter Email
 Mark has been a geek since MS-DOS gave way to Windows and the PalmPilot was a thing. He’s translated his love for…
 * Computing
 The best MacBook to buy in 2023

 With Apple's introduction of the latest M2 MacBook models, it's time to take another look at which is the best MacBook to buy in 2023. That's not always easy, though, as buying the newest MacBook isn't always the right decision. Apple has several tiers of performance, as well as various sizes, which can complicate the matter.

 There are several MacBook models available, designated MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, with varying memory and storage configurations, as well as four kinds of processors, providing a wide selection to choose from.

 Read more
 * Computing
 The best all-in-one computers for 2023

 All-in-one computers provide everything your average consumer might need in a single package, nixing the need for a standalone desktop in favor of a monitor-toting piece of PC hardware. They come in an array of styles, offering everything from 1080p touchscreens and 5K resolution to robust sound and high-end Intel Core processors. Each also typically comes bundled with a keyboard and mouse.

 Most target the premium market with a sleek, streamlined design, yet recent offerings continue to push the boundaries of a what a budget-based PC is capable of. Consumers pay for this style and convenience in terms of performance, and while the best all-in-one computers don't pack the processors or video cards some enthusiasts demand, they're efficient enough for most everyday tasks.

 Read more
 * Computing
 The best 2-in-1 laptops in 2023

 The 2-in-1 form factor has certainly come into its own over the last several years. There's really no reason to limit yourself to a clamshell, as there's a 2-in-1 that will meet the needs of all but the most demanding users in terms of sheer performance.

 We've reviewed every great 2-in-1 you can buy, including Chromebooks, convertibles, and powerful 15-inch versions. The overall best 2-in-1 at the moment is the Microsoft Surface Pro 9, with its fantastic keyboard that's as easy to remove as it is to type on, plus its 120Hz display and haptic-enabled pen. It's almost as good a laptop as it is a tablet, which is what makes it the best overall 2-in-1. test

 Read more

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Whether you’re struggling with lagging internet speeds or curious to know how your internet provider stacks up, it’s impossible to know just how fast your internet speed is without using a precise test. Top-quality internet speed tests can clear up any confusion quickly and easily. But you’ll need to know what the best internet speed tests are out there; we’ll help you with that. Check out the following internet speed tests to learn more about your upload and download speeds, as well as other exciting information about your internet connection.
  SpeedOf.Me
   
 SpeedOf.Me is an HTML5-based speed test that’s lightweight and designed to replicate real-world browsing and downloading conditions — it does so by requesting a series of files of increasing sizes and recording the download speed. The test tracks real-time info on downloads, uploads, latency, and other info like your IP address, server location, and more. You also have a history section to easily compare your tests to chart changes and a share section to share on Facebook or Twitter.
Rather than selecting a location, the website calculates the quickest and most reliable server from 127 available servers. All files are downloaded and uploaded in sequence — rather than simultaneously — to imitate real internet browsing conditions. It’s not only the prettiest speed test around, but it also provides the best data and features for a single visit. The site does require you to accept cookies before beginning, but some of our other picks do not.
  TestMy.net
   
If you’re looking for a test that offers more data than the average speed test, TestMy.net runs a series of examinations and provides useful comparison data. You will have options for testing download, upload, combined, or just latency when you first begin. Choose what you are interested in, and the test will automatically run — then, it’ll provide you with detailed charts on exactly how you performed.
The test can also show how speeds compare to others in your city, the world average, the U.S. average, and so on. Results can be saved for future use as well. If these numbers are a little unfamiliar to you, there’s also plenty of documentation and easy-to-understand guides that can help you better identify what the problem is with your internet connection.
  Speedtest.net
   
 Ookla’s bandwidth diagnostic software shows up on many other speed test sites listed here, but the most full-featured iteration of the test is on Speedtest.net, which is owned by Ookla. The tech used here is both intelligent and speedy. It picks a nearby server (out of a list of more than 1,000), runs a full test, and returns information on upload and download speed, latency, and packet loss.
You can fill out a survey after the test, answering questions about your ISP’s claimed speed and monthly connection costs. This survey allows Ookla to amass an impressive database of consumer connection information, viewed and broken down by region — in the U.S., there are significant internet speed variables on its NetIndex site.
  Fast.com
   
 Fast.com is an online speed test from Netflix. The site uses a simple interface and launches a speed test automatically. When the test is over, the site will display your current speed in Mbps.
Of course, Netflix mainly intends this for people who want to test if their current speed can handle Netflix content, especially high-def and 4K (even on your PC) content, which may benefit more from higher download speeds. You don’t have to use the test to determine if you can stream content from Netflix without buffering. We recommend this test if you want a fast and reliable option and don’t need additional latency data information.
The test allows users to choose a variety of language options. To access this feature, choose the Show More Info option after the test to display these extra details.
 Try Fast.com 
  Google Fiber Speedtest
   
Google offers a free, quick, and accurate Fiber Speedtest for anyone looking to test browser speed. You don’t have to subscribe to Google’s Fiber service, either. Google is known for efficiency and simplicity so you can trust the Fiber Speedtest will perform.
The test only takes up to 15 seconds and is extremely accurate. You’ll receive information on upload speed, download, and ping data.
The Fiber Speedtest can also tell you what server you’re using, along with other information. You can also find out how your internet speed compares with Google Fiber’s speeds.
  Test your speed using Google’s search results speed test
   
In partnership with Measurement Lab (M-Lab), Google also offers an internet speed test that you can access via its search engine. All you have to do is go to Google.com and type the phrase “internet speed test” into its search box. You’ll then be taken to a search results page that features the speed test at the top of the page. Then you’ll click on the blue Run Speed Test button to start the test. In less than a minute, this test will measure download speed, upload speed, and latency.
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With Apple's introduction of the latest M2 MacBook models, it's time to take another look at which is the best MacBook to buy in 2023. That's not always easy, though, as buying the newest MacBook isn't always the right decision. Apple has several tiers of performance, as well as various sizes, which can complicate the matter.
There are several MacBook models available, designated MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, with varying memory and storage configurations, as well as four kinds of processors, providing a wide selection to choose from. 
 
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	The best all-in-one computers for 2023	
 
All-in-one computers provide everything your average consumer might need in a single package, nixing the need for a standalone desktop in favor of a monitor-toting piece of PC hardware. They come in an array of styles, offering everything from 1080p touchscreens and 5K resolution to robust sound and high-end Intel Core processors. Each also typically comes bundled with a keyboard and mouse.
Most target the premium market with a sleek, streamlined design, yet recent offerings continue to push the boundaries of a what a budget-based PC is capable of. Consumers pay for this style and convenience in terms of performance, and while the best all-in-one computers don't pack the processors or video cards some enthusiasts demand, they're efficient enough for most everyday tasks. 
 
	Read more	
 
 
The 2-in-1 form factor has certainly come into its own over the last several years. There's really no reason to limit yourself to a clamshell, as there's a 2-in-1 that will meet the needs of all but the most demanding users in terms of sheer performance.
We've reviewed every great 2-in-1 you can buy, including Chromebooks, convertibles, and powerful 15-inch versions. The overall best 2-in-1 at the moment is the Microsoft Surface Pro 9, with its fantastic keyboard that's as easy to remove as it is to type on, plus its 120Hz display and haptic-enabled pen. It's almost as good a laptop as it is a tablet, which is what makes it the best overall 2-in-1. test 
 
	Read more
The Easiest Internet Speed Tests for Testing Your Connection
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-internet-speed-tests/
https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/government/executive-office/information-services/speed-test
Speed Test | Mendocino County, CA
2001-01-01T00:00:00Z

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 <a href="https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/departments">Departments</a> » <a href="https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/government/executive-office">Executive Office</a> » <a href="https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/departments/executive-office/information-technology">Information Technology</a> 
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<div><h2><br/>
Community advocacy for better digital access<br/>
Together we can help close the digital divide
</h2>
<p>As a resident of Mendocino County, you&#39;re invited to test your internet speed. The County has launched a crowd-sourced speed-test that aspires to collect and share data about internet availability in every region of Mendocino County.</p>
<h3>Why?</h3>
<p>With historically unserved and underserved areas, where internet service is poor or nonexistent, the pandemic highlighted the need for increased connection. Additionally, collecting this data will help the community develop policies and pursue funding to augment and facilitate the construction of needed for &#34;Last Mile&#34; infrastructure.</p>
<h3>How Does the Speed Test Work?</h3>
<p>Below enter your GPS location or the address where you are taking the test and click &#34;Let’s Do It&#34;. Unless you enter an address with no available service, <i>the address that you enter should be the address where you are right now</i>. Your location, internet provider, and upload/download results will be recorded on the Speed Test Map.</p>
<h3><a href="https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/46389/637701722671370000">Check the FAQs</a></h3>
<p>We&#39;ve got the answers to a list of <a href="https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/46389/637701722671370000">Frequently Asked Questions</a>.</p>
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 Departments » Executive Office » Information Technology 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
Community advocacy for better digital access
Together we can help close the digital divide
As a resident of Mendocino County, you&#39;re invited to test your internet speed. The County has launched a crowd-sourced speed-test that aspires to collect and share data about internet availability in every region of Mendocino County.
Why?
With historically unserved and underserved areas, where internet service is poor or nonexistent, the pandemic highlighted the need for increased connection. Additionally, collecting this data will help the community develop policies and pursue funding to augment and facilitate the construction of needed for &#34;Last Mile&#34; infrastructure.
How Does the Speed Test Work?
Below enter your GPS location or the address where you are taking the test and click &#34;Let’s Do It&#34;. Unless you enter an address with no available service, the address that you enter should be the address where you are right now. Your location, internet provider, and upload/download results will be recorded on the Speed Test Map.
 Check the FAQs 
We&#39;ve got the answers to a list of Frequently Asked Questions.
Speed Test | Mendocino County, CA
https://www.mendocinocounty.org/government/executive-office/information-services/speed-test
https://www.govtech.com/network/oregon-county-asks-residents-to-speed-test-internet-services
Oregon County Asks Residents to Speed-Test Internet Services
2022-07-14
The Daily Astorian
<div><div><p>
 
 (TNS) — Clatsop County residents are invited to take a one-minute Internet speed test in an effort to improve Internet access in Oregon.</p><p>The test will help Faster Internet Oregon — a collaboration among economic development districts and other agencies — locate the gaps in the state's Internet services. The results will be used to enhance broadband infrastructure.</p><p>The project in Clatsop, Columbia and Tillamook counties, and the western Washington County area, is being led by the Columbia-Pacific Economic Development District, which encourages people to participate as soon as possible.</p><p><br/>"Currently, the only data we have for the availability and speed of Internet connections is inaccurate," Col-Pac said in a statement. "With enough tests in the region, we can use this data to advocate for Internet infrastructure funding to improve fast and affordable Internet services."</p><p>Participants must test with a home Internet connection, not with a cellular or VPN, the organization said. People without a home Internet connection can use their cellphone to report zero Internet access at their location.</p><p>No identifying information besides a participant's address will be shared, Col-Pac said.</p><p>People can go to <a href="http://www.fasterinternetoregon.org/">www.fasterinternetoregon.org</a> to participate and for more information.</p><p>©<i>2022 The Daily Astorian, Distributed by <a href="https://www.tribunecontentagency.com/">Tribune Content Agency, LLC.</a></i></p></div></div>||||I|||| * Newsletters
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 Broadband and Network

 Oregon County Asks Residents to Speed-Test Internet Services

 Clatsop, Ore., residents are being asked to take a short Internet speed test to help Faster Internet Oregon — a collaboration among economic development districts and other agencies — locate the service gaps.

 July 14, 2022 •
 The Daily Astorian
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 Shutterstock

 (TNS) — Clatsop County residents are invited to take a one-minute Internet speed test in an effort to improve Internet access in Oregon.

 The test will help Faster Internet Oregon — a collaboration among economic development districts and other agencies — locate the gaps in the state's Internet services. The results will be used to enhance broadband infrastructure.

 The project in Clatsop, Columbia and Tillamook counties, and the western Washington County area, is being led by the Columbia-Pacific Economic Development District, which encourages people to participate as soon as possible.

 "Currently, the only data we have for the availability and speed of Internet connections is inaccurate," Col-Pac said in a statement. "With enough tests in the region, we can use this data to advocate for Internet infrastructure funding to improve fast and affordable Internet services."

 Participants must test with a home Internet connection, not with a cellular or VPN, the organization said. People without a home Internet connection can use their cellphone to report zero Internet access at their location.

 No identifying information besides a participant's address will be shared, Col-Pac said.

 People can go to www.fasterinternetoregon.org to participate and for more information.

 ©2022 The Daily Astorian, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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(TNS) — Clatsop County residents are invited to take a one-minute Internet speed test in an effort to improve Internet access in Oregon. The test will help Faster Internet Oregon — a collaboration among economic development districts and other agencies — locate the gaps in the state's Internet services. The results will be used to enhance broadband infrastructure. The project in Clatsop, Columbia and Tillamook counties, and the western Washington County area, is being led by the Columbia-Pacific Economic Development District, which encourages people to participate as soon as possible.  "Currently, the only data we have for the availability and speed of Internet connections is inaccurate," Col-Pac said in a statement. "With enough tests in the region, we can use this data to advocate for Internet infrastructure funding to improve fast and affordable Internet services." Participants must test with a home Internet connection, not with a cellular or VPN, the organization said. People without a home Internet connection can use their cellphone to report zero Internet access at their location. No identifying information besides a participant's address will be shared, Col-Pac said. People can go to www.fasterinternetoregon.org to participate and for more information. ©2022 The Daily Astorian, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Oregon County Asks Residents to Speed-Test Internet Services
https://www.govtech.com/network/oregon-county-asks-residents-to-speed-test-internet-services
https://dongknows.com/how-to-do-an-internet-or-wi-fi-speed-test/
Internet or Wi-Fi Speed Test: Get it 100% Right Today | Dong Knows Tech
2022-11-09
Dong Ngo
<div><div>
<p>At one point or another, you might have wondered how to do a proper Wi-Fi speed test or the right way to figure out how fast your Internet connection is. </p>
<p>In this post, you'll find out what an Internet connection entails and how to figure out the absolute speeds of your connections. Take "absolute" with a big grain of salt, though, since these speeds vary greatly.</p>
<p>The method mentioned here is also what I use for <a href="https://dongknows.com/?p=76170">official testing</a> in all networking reviews on this website.</p>
<p>Before we continue, ensure you understand that <em>Wi-Fi</em> and <em>the Internet</em> are <a href="https://dongknows.com/internet-and-wi-fi-and-you/">two different things</a>. As a result, using one to test the other can be problematic.</p>
<p><strong>Dong's note:</strong> <em>I first published this post on December 19, 2018, and last updated it on November 9, 2022, to include additional relevant information.</em></p>
<div>
<figure><figcaption>Internet or Wi-Fi Speed Test: Figuring out those numbers can be challenging.</figcaption></figure></div>
<div>
<p></p><nav><ul><li><a href="#why-you-should-care-about-your-internet-speed">Why you should care about your Internet speed</a><ul><li><a href="#internet-connection-explained">Internet connection explained</a><ul><li><a href="#internet-speed-upload-vs-download">Internet speed: Upload vs. download</a></li><li><a href="#packet-loss">Packet loss</a></li><li><a href="#lag-or-latency-ping-vs-jitter">Lag (or latency): Ping vs. jitter</a></li></ul></li><li><a href="#how-to-do-a-real-internet-speed-test">How to do a real Internet speed test</a><ul><li><a href="#what-you-need-to-do-a-real-internet-speed-test">What you need to do a real Internet speed test</a></li></ul></li><li><a href="#how-to-test-a-routers-wi-fi-speed-test">How to test a router’s Wi-Fi speed test</a><ul><li><a href="#what-you-need-to-do-a-real-wi-fi-speed-test">What you need to do a real Wi-Fi speed test</a></li></ul></li></ul></li><li><a href="#the-takeaway">The takeaway</a></li></ul></nav></div>
<h2>Why you should care about your Internet speed</h2>
<p>It's generally helpful to know how fast your Internet is. Faster always seems better, but you only need certain speed grades to do specific tasks. </p>
<p>Above a certain speed grade, where the connection is fast enough for even the most demanding application, broadband speed testing should be used only to confirm the paid bandwidth. It's meaningless otherwise. </p>
<p>Take video streaming—one of the most bandwidth-taxing online activities—for example; you'll generally need a <em>minimum </em>download speed of:</p>
<ul>
<li>3-4 Megabits per second for DVD quality or face timing on a phone screen.</li>
<li>5Mbps for HD quality.</li>
<li>25Mbps for Blu-ray (4K) quality.</li>
<li>80Mbps for 8K video.</li>
</ul>
<p>Keep in mind that this is the speed required by a single stream. If you have more than one person streaming simultaneously, you generally need to multiply those numbers with the concurrent clients to determine the necessary real-time bandwidth. </p>
<p>Also, there are a lot more online applications than streaming. Some of these applications—such as automatic updates—even occur within a connected device without you getting involved. </p>
<p>So yes, again, faster Internet is always better. But there's more than the download speed on the Internet.</p>
<h3>Internet connection explained</h3>
<p>When testing an Internet connection, you'll get two main numbers, download and upload—sometimes they are called downlink and uplink. And you might also see a few other values, including ping, jitter, and packet loss. </p>
<p>Following is the breakdown of what they mean.</p>
<h4>Internet speed: Upload vs. download</h4>
<p><strong>Download</strong> speed represents how fast you can pull things from outside your local network. </p>
<p>That said, streaming a movie, surfing a website, downloading a file, getting an email, etc., use the download pipe.</p>
<p>In a speed test, download is the speed the test device (a computer or a phone) pulls information from the remote server that hosts the test data.</p>
<p><strong>Upload</strong> represents the speed of the opposite direction. </p>
<p>Things like sending an email, posting a photo or comment to Facebook, saving a file to Google Drive, using cloud-recording/smart devices, etc., use the upload pipe.</p>
<p>While we use more of the download pipe, data transmission—delivered in small portions called <em>packets</em>—needs <i>both</i> directions to work. That's because your computer uses the upload pipe to confirm to the remote server that it has received a packet and is ready for the next one. </p>
<p>That said,<em> when the upload pipe is clogged up, you can't download anything.</em></p>
<p>In a <a href="https://dongknows.com/how-to-install-your-own-cable-modem/">Cable broadband</a> connection, the <em>download speed tends to be much faster than the upload speed</em>. But you might get the same rate for both directions with a <a href="https://dongknows.com/10gbps-internet-unlocking-super-broadbands-secret/">Fiber-optic service</a>.</p>
<p>Still, suppose somebody is seeding a torrent file or uploading a large amount of information without limiting the upload speed for the task. In that case, others might not be able to download anything. Keep that in mind. </p>
<p>Cloud-recording security cameras, like those from Google or <a href="https://dongknows.com/arlo-ultra-4k-wire-free-security-camera-system-review/">Arlo</a>, and "smart devices" can put a massive strain on the upload. Don't use them if you have a modest broadband connection. In this case, you might need to <a href="https://dongknows.com/how-to-conserve-your-internet-bandwidth/">conserve your Internet bandwidth</a>. )</p>
<h4><strong>Packet loss</strong></h4>
<p>As the name suggests, packet loss happens when a packet of data is either not received or partially received. </p>
<p>Most of the time, this results from a bad physical connection or incompatible <a href="https://dongknows.com/mtu-and-jumbo-frame-explained/">MTU</a> settings. In this case, the packet will be resent. Packet loss shouldn't be higher than 1 percent.</p>
<h4>Lag (or latency): Ping vs. jitter</h4>
<p>Both ping and jitter relate to the delay in a connection, but they are slightly different.</p>
<p><strong>Ping</strong> is the fixed latency (a.k.a <em>lag</em>) at a given time—in a speed test, it's generally measured at the beginning. It's the amount of time, shown in milliseconds, needed for a data packet from one party to reach another or vice versa. </p>
<p>The shorter your ping is, the better your Internet connection is for applications that require real-time interaction, such as Wi-Fi calling or online gaming. Generally, a ping of 15ms or shorter is considered excellent.</p>
<p><strong>Jitter</strong>, often called Packet Delay Variation (PDV) or ping variations, measures ping values over time—the entire test. </p>
<p>In other words, if every packet takes the exact amount of time—no matter how long—to arrive at the destination, then there's no jitter. </p>
<p>The higher the jitter value, the more likely a packet loss will occur. The jitter value should be below 30ms and is generally below 10ms.</p>
<h3>How to do a real Internet speed test</h3>
<p>There are many speed testing websites, such as Speedof.me, Fast.com, or Speedtest.net, for you to choose from. But don't get too obsessed about which to use. They all use the same test methodology. </p>
<p>And no matter which you use, the results will vary due to the server's location (and Internet speed). So pick one that's best for your location, and in that sense, Speedtest.net is excellent—it's ubiquitously available with many servers of different speed grades.</p>
<p>Since you're on this page, do a quick test right now. </p>
<div>
<p> 
	⏱️ Dong Knows Tech custom Speed Test transfers data between your device and an Ookla test server
	</p></div>
<p>So how fast is it? Totally fast, and you're happy with it? Good for you! You can move on now. But if it's not what you expected, keep in mind that chances are it's not your correct Internet speed anyway.</p>
<p>If you were using a phone's cellular connection during the test, that was indeed your Internet's actual speed. However, mobile Internet speed continuously varies greatly depending on where you are.</p>
<p>Let me explain. When you did the test, there might have been other devices in the network, also using part of the connection's bandwidth. </p>
<p>If you have an ultra-high-speed broadband plan, the local Wi-Fi or your computer's wired connection might not be fast enough to deliver the Internet bandwidth fully.</p>
<p>That said, to find out the <em>real</em> speed of your broadband connection, you must prepare before the testing.</p>
<figure><p></p><figcaption>Your Internet speed is generally most correct at the terminal device, such as your <a href="https://dongknows.com/tag/cable-modems/">Cable modem</a> or <a href="https://dongknows.com/fiber-vs-cable-internet-docsis-modem-vs-ont/">Fiber-optic ONT</a>, at your home's broadband drop. Specifically, you want to connect the test equipment to the network port of the terminal device—in the photos above, it's the yellow or white network cable, respectively.</figcaption></figure>
<h4>What you need to do a real Internet speed test</h4>
<p>To test your broadband connection, you need to do that at the source—the terminal device—using hardware of the same speed grade or, preferably, significantly faster than the expected Internet speed. </p>
<p>The point is that if the equipment is the bottleneck, the test result will be the speed of the equipment itself.</p>
<p>Specifically, here is what you need:</p>
<ul>
<li>A test computer with a network port: A Gigabit port is usually OK, but if you want to test a full Gigabit, Gig+, or faster <a href="https://dongknows.com/gigabit-internet-and-you/">broadband connection</a>, a Multi-Gig-capable (2.5Gbps, 5Gbps, 10Gbps) computer is a must. That means, in most cases, you need a desktop with a 10Gbps PCIe <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=10+BASE-T+Gigabit+Ethernet+Network+Card&amp;i=electronics&amp;language=en_US&amp;crid=YRV4MWWKEU45&amp;linkCode=sl2&amp;linkId=5c9113df7ac201a2c05e593e0dd36eb2&amp;sprefix=10+base-t+gigabit+ethernet+network+card%2Celectronics%2C131&amp;tag=dkt-ct-20">internal adapter</a> or a Thunderbolt laptop with a 10Gbps <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K7SMF89/?tag=dkt-rbox-20">external adapter</a>. </li>
<li>CAT6a or higher grade cables: Generally, CAT5e cable can deliver up to 10Gbps, but for testing, it's best to use CAT6a or higher grade to make sure.</li>
<li>(Optional) a router capable of <a href="https://dongknows.com/multi-gig-explained/">Multi-Gig</a> on both WAN and LAN sides: This applies only if you want to test the connection via (behind) the router. In this case, turn off any bandwidth-related features of the router, such as <a href="https://dongknows.com/qos-explained-and-how-it-makes-wi-fi-calling-better/">QoS</a>, bandwidth limiter, traffic monitor, security, parental control, etc. So, a multi-Gigabit router is recommended, but if you have a sub-Gigabit broadband connection, a Gigabit router will do.</li>
</ul>
<p>After that, here's how to connect the devices for the test:</p>
<ul>
<li>Connect the test machine directly to the Internet terminal device, a modem, a <a href="https://dongknows.com/home-wi-fi-router-setup/#Modem_vs_Router_vs_Gateway">gateway</a>, or a <a href="https://dongknows.com/fiber-vs-cable-internet-docsis-modem-vs-ont/">Fiber ONT</a>, using a network cable. The objective is to remove all middle devices, like a slow switch or router, that can be <a href="https://dongknows.com/gigabit-internet-and-you/">the bottleneck</a>.</li>
<li>(Optional) If you use a router, make sure you connect its fastest ports for both the WAN—the terminal device—and the LAN side, which is your test computer. Generally, the speed test function of a router (via its web user interface or mobile app) is only for reference and is never correct due to various reasons.</li>
<li>Check to ensure the computer is the only device using the broadband connection during the test. If the Internet source is a gateway, make sure you disconnect all other devices from it (unplug all other network cables and turn off its Wi-Fi).</li>
</ul>
<p>And that's it! Now on the test computer, do a few speed tests as you did earlier. Pick test servers that are geographically closest to you to make sure. The number you get is your <em>real</em> Internet speed.</p>
<p>You'll likely still get a different result each time you do a test. That's just how the Internet is. Feel free to use the highest number as your broadband score. </p>
<p>Now, if it's still significantly lower than your broadband plan, it's time to call the provider to complain. </p>
<p>Again this complicated <em>real test</em> is to make sure you get what the ISP promises you. Generally, you only need to do a random test on any device to determine the connection speed at any given time, and if it's fast enough, there's no need to do anything else.</p>
<h3>How to test a router’s Wi-Fi speed test</h3>
<p>There are many Wi-Fi speed test apps. <em>None</em> of these are accurate for a couple of reasons.</p>
<p>First, mobile devices almost always optimize their Wi-Fi adapter for power consumption and not performance to conserve battery life—the former is way more important in real-world usage.</p>
<p>Second, none of these apps can move data between itself and another local device to replicate what users do in real life. They are all <em>synthetic</em>. </p>
<p>That said, avoid using speed test apps if you want to know how fast your local Wi-Fi speed <em>really</em> is. </p>
<p>And you shouldn't use Internet speed test apps to test the local Wi-Fi speed, either. In most cases, a router's Wi-Fi speed is likely much faster than the speed of a broadband connection. Even when you have ultra-fast Internet, many variations in the World Wide Web can adversely affect broadband speeds. The gist is that it's rarely accurate, if at all, to use the Internet to test your Wi-Fi's throughputs. </p>
<div>
<p><strong>Note on speed testing using a phone</strong></p>
<p>It's OK to use a phone to do a speed test via an app as long as you don't take the result as the true indicator of your Wi-Fi <em>or </em>broadband speed. Instead, consider the number as the phone's real-time general connection speed. And that information can be helpful enough.</p>
<p>If your Internet or the Wi-Fi connection is faster than a particular speed grade, say 500Mbps, and you want to figure out the actual speed, you need to test it via a computer with the fastest network and Wi-Fi adapter to make sure.</p>
</div>
<p>The best way to determine a router's Wi-Fi speed is to copy data from one computer (a server) to another (a Wi-Fi client) within the local network, using a single wired-to-wireless connection. </p>
<p>If you use multiple Wi-Fi clients for the testing, the router's <a href="https://dongknows.com/dual-band-vs-tri-band-wi-fi-routers-explained/">Wi-Fi bandwidth is shared</a>; therefore, you can't determine how fast its Wi-Fi can genuinely be. That's not to mention other factors, such as software driver or hardware grades.</p>
<p>And that means, again, you need to do some preparation.</p>
<h4>What you need to do a real Wi-Fi speed test</h4>
<p>In my experience, the real-world speed of Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac), even at its best, has never surpassed the sustained rate of a wired Gigabit connection. But starting with Wi-Fi 6, the wireless connection can be significantly faster at optimal settings and distances.</p>
<p>In any case, keep this in mind: The connection speed between a pair of <a href="https://dongknows.com/home-wi-fi-router-setup/">network devices</a> is at the mercy of the lowest party involved. The rate you see is that of the bottleneck device—if that's the device you want to test, then your result is correct.</p>
<p>That said, these are what you need to test a device's Wi-Fi speed:</p>
<ol>
<li>A computer that plays the server's role and hosts the test data. This computer must have a Gigabit network port—or a 10 Gigabit Ethernet port if you intend to test a Wi-Fi 6 router—and use a solid-state drive as its storage. Connect this computer to the <em>fastest LAN port </em>of the Wi-Fi router you want to test. (If the router doesn't support Gigabit, you can forget about it. It's already too slow, anyway). Now on this server computer, share the folder that contains the test data so that it's accessible to other computers that connect to the same router.</li>
<li>A second computer—be it a laptop or a desktop—to play the Wi-Fi client's role. This computer must have the highest-end (fastest possible) Wi-Fi adapter of at least the same speed grate as the router. This computer should also use a solid-state drive as its storage. Connect this computer to the Wi-Fi network of the router. Make sure you <strong><em>separate the bands</em></strong> when possible, be it 2.4GHz, 5GHz, or 6GHz, into different SSID to know which band is being tested.</li>
</ol>
<p>And that's it! Now from the second computer (the Wi-Fi client), browse for the shared folder on the server and copy the data. Time how long that process takes, do some simple math with the amount of data involved, and you'll figure out how fast the connection is.</p>
<p>For example, if the data you copy is 2000 megabytes and the copy process takes 30 seconds, the speed is 66.7 megabytes per second or 533.6 Mbps.</p>
<p>You can move the Wi-Fi client around to find out how the distances—between the router and the client—affect the Wi-Fi speed.</p>
<p>Similar to Internet speed, the Wi-Fi speed also tends to fluctuate. That said, feel free to pick the highest number of the same location as your router's speed.</p>
<h2>The takeaway</h2>
<p>Again, unless you need to find out the actual speed of a Wi-Fi broadcaster or your broadband, for one reason or another, there's no need to work very hard at it. Most of the time, a <a href="https://dongknows.com/clutter-free-internet-speed-test/">quick speed test</a> is enough. </p>
<p>Ultimately, we only need the connection to be as fast as the application being used requires. Above that, the extra bandwidth will not amount to anything meaningful.</p>
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 Broadband Connection Explained: Tips on Correct Internet and Wi-Fi Speed Testing

 Dong Ngo
 Nov 9, 2022
 11 Min Read
 78 Comments
 Share what you're reading!

 At one point or another, you might have wondered how to do a proper Wi-Fi speed test or the right way to figure out how fast your Internet connection is.

 In this post, you'll find out what an Internet connection entails and how to figure out the absolute speeds of your connections. Take "absolute" with a big grain of salt, though, since these speeds vary greatly.

 The method mentioned here is also what I use for official testing in all networking reviews on this website.

 Before we continue, ensure you understand that Wi-Fi and the Internet are two different things. As a result, using one to test the other can be problematic.

 Related stories on Wi-Fi and Internet Speed Testing

 * Speed testing: How to figure out the correct Internet and Wi-Fi throughputs
 * Wi-Fi vs. the Internet: Two different things
 * Home broadband repair: Step to troubleshoot a
 * Land-based broadband explained: Cable vs. fiber or Modem vs. ONT
 * Home Wi-Fi explained: Hertz, bands, streams, channels, range, and more
 * Working from home? Quick tips on getting the best Wi-Fi coverage
 * 10Gbps Internet: Unlocking the secret of super broadband
 * Wi-Fi practical lists:
 + Multi-Gig Wi-Fi 6/6E routers and mesh systems
 + Best Wi-Fi 6 routers | mesh systems
 + Best Wi-Fi 6E routers | mesh systems

 Dong's note: I first published this post on December 19, 2018, and last updated it on November 9, 2022, to include additional relevant information.

 Internet or Wi-Fi Speed Test: Figuring out those numbers can be challenging.

 Table of Contents

 * Why you should care about your Internet speed
 + Internet connection explained
 o Internet speed: Upload vs. download
 o Packet loss
 o Lag (or latency): Ping vs. jitter
 + How to do a real Internet speed test
 o What you need to do a real Internet speed test
 + How to test a router’s Wi-Fi speed test
 o What you need to do a real Wi-Fi speed test
 * The takeaway

 Why you should care about your Internet speed

 It's generally helpful to know how fast your Internet is. Faster always seems better, but you only need certain speed grades to do specific tasks.

 Above a certain speed grade, where the connection is fast enough for even the most demanding application, broadband speed testing should be used only to confirm the paid bandwidth. It's meaningless otherwise.

 Take video streaming—one of the most bandwidth-taxing online activities—for example; you'll generally need a minimum download speed of:

 * 3-4 Megabits per second for DVD quality or face timing on a phone screen.
 * 5Mbps for HD quality.
 * 25Mbps for Blu-ray (4K) quality.
 * 80Mbps for 8K video.

 Keep in mind that this is the speed required by a single stream. If you have more than one person streaming simultaneously, you generally need to multiply those numbers with the concurrent clients to determine the necessary real-time bandwidth.

 Also, there are a lot more online applications than streaming. Some of these applications—such as automatic updates—even occur within a connected device without you getting involved.

 So yes, again, faster Internet is always better. But there's more than the download speed on the Internet.

 Internet connection explained

 When testing an Internet connection, you'll get two main numbers, download and upload—sometimes they are called downlink and uplink. And you might also see a few other values, including ping, jitter, and packet loss.

 Following is the breakdown of what they mean.

 Internet speed: Upload vs. download

 Download speed represents how fast you can pull things from outside your local network.

 That said, streaming a movie, surfing a website, downloading a file, getting an email, etc., use the download pipe.

 In a speed test, download is the speed the test device (a computer or a phone) pulls information from the remote server that hosts the test data.

 Upload represents the speed of the opposite direction.

 Things like sending an email, posting a photo or comment to Facebook, saving a file to Google Drive, using cloud-recording/smart devices, etc., use the upload pipe.

 While we use more of the download pipe, data transmission—delivered in small portions called packets—needs both directions to work. That's because your computer uses the upload pipe to confirm to the remote server that it has received a packet and is ready for the next one.

 That said, when the upload pipe is clogged up, you can't download anything.

 In a Cable broadband connection, the download speed tends to be much faster than the upload speed. But you might get the same rate for both directions with a Fiber-optic service.

 Still, suppose somebody is seeding a torrent file or uploading a large amount of information without limiting the upload speed for the task. In that case, others might not be able to download anything. Keep that in mind.

 Cloud-recording security cameras, like those from Google or Arlo, and "smart devices" can put a massive strain on the upload. Don't use them if you have a modest broadband connection. In this case, you might need to conserve your Internet bandwidth. )

 Packet loss

 As the name suggests, packet loss happens when a packet of data is either not received or partially received.

 Most of the time, this results from a bad physical connection or incompatible MTU settings. In this case, the packet will be resent. Packet loss shouldn't be higher than 1 percent.

 Lag (or latency): Ping vs. jitter

 Both ping and jitter relate to the delay in a connection, but they are slightly different.

 Ping is the fixed latency (a.k.a lag) at a given time—in a speed test, it's generally measured at the beginning. It's the amount of time, shown in milliseconds, needed for a data packet from one party to reach another or vice versa.

 The shorter your ping is, the better your Internet connection is for applications that require real-time interaction, such as Wi-Fi calling or online gaming. Generally, a ping of 15ms or shorter is considered excellent.

 Jitter, often called Packet Delay Variation (PDV) or ping variations, measures ping values over time—the entire test.

 In other words, if every packet takes the exact amount of time—no matter how long—to arrive at the destination, then there's no jitter.

 The higher the jitter value, the more likely a packet loss will occur. The jitter value should be below 30ms and is generally below 10ms.

 How to do a real Internet speed test

 There are many speed testing websites, such as Speedof.me, Fast.com, or Speedtest.net, for you to choose from. But don't get too obsessed about which to use. They all use the same test methodology.

 And no matter which you use, the results will vary due to the server's location (and Internet speed). So pick one that's best for your location, and in that sense, Speedtest.net is excellent—it's ubiquitously available with many servers of different speed grades.

 Since you're on this page, do a quick test right now.

 ⏱️ Dong Knows Tech custom Speed Test transfers data between your device and an Ookla test server

 So how fast is it? Totally fast, and you're happy with it? Good for you! You can move on now. But if it's not what you expected, keep in mind that chances are it's not your correct Internet speed anyway.

 If you were using a phone's cellular connection during the test, that was indeed your Internet's actual speed. However, mobile Internet speed continuously varies greatly depending on where you are.

 Let me explain. When you did the test, there might have been other devices in the network, also using part of the connection's bandwidth.

 If you have an ultra-high-speed broadband plan, the local Wi-Fi or your computer's wired connection might not be fast enough to deliver the Internet bandwidth fully.

 That said, to find out the real speed of your broadband connection, you must prepare before the testing.

 Your Internet speed is generally most correct at the terminal device, such as your Cable modem or Fiber-optic ONT, at your home's broadband drop. Specifically, you want to connect the test equipment to the network port of the terminal device—in the photos above, it's the yellow or white network cable, respectively.

 What you need to do a real Internet speed test

 To test your broadband connection, you need to do that at the source—the terminal device—using hardware of the same speed grade or, preferably, significantly faster than the expected Internet speed.

 The point is that if the equipment is the bottleneck, the test result will be the speed of the equipment itself.

 Specifically, here is what you need:

 * A test computer with a network port: A Gigabit port is usually OK, but if you want to test a full Gigabit, Gig+, or faster broadband connection, a Multi-Gig-capable (2.5Gbps, 5Gbps, 10Gbps) computer is a must. That means, in most cases, you need a desktop with a 10Gbps PCIe internal adapter or a Thunderbolt laptop with a 10Gbps external adapter.
 * CAT6a or higher grade cables: Generally, CAT5e cable can deliver up to 10Gbps, but for testing, it's best to use CAT6a or higher grade to make sure.
 * (Optional) a router capable of Multi-Gig on both WAN and LAN sides: This applies only if you want to test the connection via (behind) the router. In this case, turn off any bandwidth-related features of the router, such as QoS, bandwidth limiter, traffic monitor, security, parental control, etc. So, a multi-Gigabit router is recommended, but if you have a sub-Gigabit broadband connection, a Gigabit router will do.

 After that, here's how to connect the devices for the test:

 * Connect the test machine directly to the Internet terminal device, a modem, a gateway, or a Fiber ONT, using a network cable. The objective is to remove all middle devices, like a slow switch or router, that can be the bottleneck.
 * (Optional) If you use a router, make sure you connect its fastest ports for both the WAN—the terminal device—and the LAN side, which is your test computer. Generally, the speed test function of a router (via its web user interface or mobile app) is only for reference and is never correct due to various reasons.
 * Check to ensure the computer is the only device using the broadband connection during the test. If the Internet source is a gateway, make sure you disconnect all other devices from it (unplug all other network cables and turn off its Wi-Fi).

 And that's it! Now on the test computer, do a few speed tests as you did earlier. Pick test servers that are geographically closest to you to make sure. The number you get is your real Internet speed.

 You'll likely still get a different result each time you do a test. That's just how the Internet is. Feel free to use the highest number as your broadband score.

 Now, if it's still significantly lower than your broadband plan, it's time to call the provider to complain.

 Again this complicated real test is to make sure you get what the ISP promises you. Generally, you only need to do a random test on any device to determine the connection speed at any given time, and if it's fast enough, there's no need to do anything else.

 How to test a router’s Wi-Fi speed test

 There are many Wi-Fi speed test apps. None of these are accurate for a couple of reasons.

 First, mobile devices almost always optimize their Wi-Fi adapter for power consumption and not performance to conserve battery life—the former is way more important in real-world usage.

 Second, none of these apps can move data between itself and another local device to replicate what users do in real life. They are all synthetic.

 That said, avoid using speed test apps if you want to know how fast your local Wi-Fi speed really is.

 And you shouldn't use Internet speed test apps to test the local Wi-Fi speed, either. In most cases, a router's Wi-Fi speed is likely much faster than the speed of a broadband connection. Even when you have ultra-fast Internet, many variations in the World Wide Web can adversely affect broadband speeds. The gist is that it's rarely accurate, if at all, to use the Internet to test your Wi-Fi's throughputs.

 Note on speed testing using a phone

 It's OK to use a phone to do a speed test via an app as long as you don't take the result as the true indicator of your Wi-Fi or broadband speed. Instead, consider the number as the phone's real-time general connection speed. And that information can be helpful enough.

 If your Internet or the Wi-Fi connection is faster than a particular speed grade, say 500Mbps, and you want to figure out the actual speed, you need to test it via a computer with the fastest network and Wi-Fi adapter to make sure.

 The best way to determine a router's Wi-Fi speed is to copy data from one computer (a server) to another (a Wi-Fi client) within the local network, using a single wired-to-wireless connection.

 If you use multiple Wi-Fi clients for the testing, the router's Wi-Fi bandwidth is shared; therefore, you can't determine how fast its Wi-Fi can genuinely be. That's not to mention other factors, such as software driver or hardware grades.

 And that means, again, you need to do some preparation.

 What you need to do a real Wi-Fi speed test

 In my experience, the real-world speed of Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac), even at its best, has never surpassed the sustained rate of a wired Gigabit connection. But starting with Wi-Fi 6, the wireless connection can be significantly faster at optimal settings and distances.

 In any case, keep this in mind: The connection speed between a pair of network devices is at the mercy of the lowest party involved. The rate you see is that of the bottleneck device—if that's the device you want to test, then your result is correct.

 That said, these are what you need to test a device's Wi-Fi speed:

 1. A computer that plays the server's role and hosts the test data. This computer must have a Gigabit network port—or a 10 Gigabit Ethernet port if you intend to test a Wi-Fi 6 router—and use a solid-state drive as its storage. Connect this computer to the fastest LAN port of the Wi-Fi router you want to test. (If the router doesn't support Gigabit, you can forget about it. It's already too slow, anyway). Now on this server computer, share the folder that contains the test data so that it's accessible to other computers that connect to the same router.
 2. A second computer—be it a laptop or a desktop—to play the Wi-Fi client's role. This computer must have the highest-end (fastest possible) Wi-Fi adapter of at least the same speed grate as the router. This computer should also use a solid-state drive as its storage. Connect this computer to the Wi-Fi network of the router. Make sure you separate the bands when possible, be it 2.4GHz, 5GHz, or 6GHz, into different SSID to know which band is being tested.

 And that's it! Now from the second computer (the Wi-Fi client), browse for the shared folder on the server and copy the data. Time how long that process takes, do some simple math with the amount of data involved, and you'll figure out how fast the connection is.

 For example, if the data you copy is 2000 megabytes and the copy process takes 30 seconds, the speed is 66.7 megabytes per second or 533.6 Mbps.

 You can move the Wi-Fi client around to find out how the distances—between the router and the client—affect the Wi-Fi speed.

 Similar to Internet speed, the Wi-Fi speed also tends to fluctuate. That said, feel free to pick the highest number of the same location as your router's speed.

 The takeaway

 Again, unless you need to find out the actual speed of a Wi-Fi broadcaster or your broadband, for one reason or another, there's no need to work very hard at it. Most of the time, a quick speed test is enough.

 Ultimately, we only need the connection to be as fast as the application being used requires. Above that, the extra bandwidth will not amount to anything meaningful.

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 78 thoughts on “Broadband Connection Explained: Tips on Correct Internet and Wi-Fi Speed Testing”

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 1. Andre
 Jan 4, 2024 at 7:36 am

 Hi Dong, I recently got a 10 Gbps FTTH connection.
 Various measurements with speedtest.net (Ookla) carried out via browser (Edge / Firefox) always gave values around 2600-2800 Mbps (down) and 2080 Mbps (upload). When I complained to the provider (the contract would provide for 10 / 2 Gbps (down/up) he replied that the speed measured by the technician at the modem port was around 7.5 Gbps and that if I wanted to check it in person I had to do the test not with the browser but using the native speedtest.net application.
 No sooner said than done, on various servers it now measures 7500-7800 Mbps in down and always 2080 in upload.
 So the “bottleneck” is the browser? (why ?)
 Thanks and happy new year

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Jan 4, 2024 at 9:25 am

 That’s not the case in my experience but it can vary depending on the situations or ISPs, Andre.

 Reply
 o andre
 Jan 4, 2024 at 9:51 am

 it would seem that there is no substantial difference between tests with browser and app for speeds up to 2.5 Gbps. For higher speeds the app is instead reliable.
 Time: with browser 2011 down – 2058 up; with app 7848 down – 2023 up
 Thank you.

 Reply
 2. Andrey
 Aug 29, 2023 at 10:19 am

 Hi Dong, Do your bandwidth calculations for video streaming (e.g., 5Mbps for HD; 25Mbps for 4k) assume compression? They seem low for raw video so I was hoping you could give an example of a calculation.

 Thank you and I’m a big fan of your writing

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Aug 29, 2023 at 10:42 am

 They are true numbers, Andrey, and not for raw videos but compressed streaming formats. You can even try that yourself: Stream a single 4K video, say from Netfix, and watch your real-time bandwidth via the router. Most of the time, it’ll be lower than 25Mbps.

 Reply
 3. NSM
 Jan 6, 2023 at 12:01 pm

 You have shared a very useful post i really like it keep going on, thanks for sharing such an informative content with us. I like to visit this helpful blog again for further updates.☺️

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Jan 6, 2023 at 12:03 pm

 Sure! And you’re welcome. Just don’t spam us. Make sure you respect the comment rules. 🙂

 Reply
 4. Faiz
 Nov 6, 2022 at 11:03 pm

 Hi Dong, have you tried the local version of open speed test? {…}

 I assume it’s similar to copying a file from a server like you’re doing, but a bit more convenient assuming there’s nothing that’s different with this speed test program.

 Would love to hear your thoughts!

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Nov 6, 2022 at 11:17 pm

 No, and I’m not interested, Faiz.

 Reply
 5. PatrickInBama
 Feb 25, 2022 at 1:59 pm

 Not exactly the answer I was hoping for. I currently have AT&T Uverse with a 50Mbps plan. Speedtest confirms the modem is getting that. I also just got Charter Spectrum Gigabit and the same test gives me anywhere from 700 to 830 Mbps. Not exactly 1,000 and certainly not 900+ that some people get. It could be because our house is about 1,200 ft from the TAP. So I want to compare what I have now and it’s frustrating. I can test my wifi with my phone and I say BS because even 120 ft away from this basic modem/router from AT&T (5268AC) I’m getting 89% of the bandwidth. That’s not right IMO because when I had this solo, my son couldn’t play video games and was really banned from League of Legends because of bad speed. So I routed a Cat5 cable from the router to his room to a Nighthawk and then ethernet to his desktop and he’s never complained again. So I am buying a Netgear Orbi 6 and placing the router next to the AT&T in my office and then the satellite in my son’s room on the opposite end of the house (roughly 150 feet away). I want to compare the wi-fi speed between the mesh and spectrum and then also with the Uverse router with the Nighthawk. I need to walk around the house and see if I may need a 2nd satellite. What software can I use to compare the different configurations? I am using ethernet backhaul on the mesh.

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Feb 25, 2022 at 2:52 pm

 Reread the post, Patrick. Using a phone, you can *never* get the correct speeds in testing, especially at this speed grade. Also, don’t get Orbi if you already wired your home — more here.

 Unfortunately, you’d need to do quite a bit of reading before you can figure this out. Getting frustrated won’t help. 🙂

 Reply
 6. William
 Feb 2, 2022 at 10:23 am

 Hi Dong,

 First let me say that I love your site and your honest assessments on networking tech. I’m a long-time reader and first time commenter.

 In no way is this meant to be insulting; I’m sure you are already aware of these concepts but I just wanted to point something out for the sake of your readers that are interested in speed testing their networks.

 **It is a good idea to test your read/write speeds to your local storage and use this as a gauge to ensure you’re Wi-Fi speed tests aren’t being limited by your storage throughputs.**

 For instance, if you run a local copy/write (e.g. create a brand-new copy of a large file from one local storage drive to another local storage drive [ex. C:\test.file -> D:\copy-of-test.file] *you need to have two separate local storage devices for this*).

 1. Let’s say your write throughput tops out around 300MBps (megabytes/sec) which is ~2400 Mbps (megabits/sec).

 2. Now, when you perform your speed test on your Wi-Fi 6e connection that is supposed to be giving you 4800Mbps, or whatever, and you are only seeing somewhere in the neighborhood of 2400Mbps, you will be able to conclude that your bottleneck is with your storage throughput and not your Wi-Fi hardware.

 **note** there are a lot of factors that affect storage throughput like caching, write acknowledgement behavior for the particular file system, RAID parity level, CPU, Mem, bus, etc. But there’s no reason to dig down into all of those variables if you are only interested in testing your wireless network speeds. Unless, of course, you identify your storage as a bottleneck, and want to diagnose it more granularly to try to find a fix.**

 I’m sure you are already aware of the above, and probably didn’t want to overcomplicate the post by listing every possible factor that plays a part in a speed test. I just thought I’d mention it in case someone runs into this. It was a lesson I had to learn from experience years ago.

 Regards and thanks again for your fantastic reviews.
 William
 Lead Technical Architect for Cloud, Data Center, Automation, & DevOps Technologies

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Feb 2, 2022 at 10:51 am

 Appreciate your input, William. My equipment all uses NVMe SSDs that can do over 2000MB/s of sustained copy speeds — that’s some 7x of 300MB/s or 16000Mbps. I mentioned those drives in the post and linked to my review of one of them. If somehow you’re new to NVMe SSDs, this post will help. Generally, on this website, it helps if you read any post with some attention. 🙂

 Reply
 7. FARA WAY
 Nov 5, 2021 at 7:49 am

 Does it matter if I speed-test my mobile data with any speed test page of telcos in my country? Each of them using their own local internet gateway respectively but all of them located at the same place. Will it affect accuracy of the result?

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Nov 5, 2021 at 9:30 am

 Yes, Fara since each test server might have a different configuration, etc. But generally, there’s no need to be super accurate, and you can test using all of them and pick the one with the highest numbers as your Internet speed.

 Reply
 8. Russ
 Sep 29, 2021 at 10:05 am

 Hi Dong, thanks a lot for sharing this. I just got a RT-A86U.

 I’m currently running this as a wired AP mode. On the note of synthetic speed test, I’m utilising a mobile app; CloudCheck and to test solely the wi-fi link speed between my phone (iPhone 13 Pro Max) with the router, I’m utilising the wi-fi sweetspots function.
 Based on the data, it maxes out at 750Mbps when just 1m away from the router.

 Should I be seeing >1Gbps on this graph granted that the phone utilises a 2×2 MIMO? Have separated out the 2.4Ghz and 5.0Ghz band.

 In professional settings, have set the following for the 5.0Ghz band (which I thought may affect better performance):
 – modulation scheme: up to MCS 11
 – airtime fairness: disabled
 – multi-user MIMO: enabled
 – OFDMA.802.11ax MU-MIMO DL/UL OFDMA + MU-MIMO
 – 802ax/ac beamforming: enable

 Hope to hear if you have any comments on this as based on your review of this router I saw that you were able to achieve 1250 Mbps on the 2×2 MIMO setup 3m away. Kind of bummed that I’m not able to achieve a similar result to you which was the primary reason I upgraded from my aging Apple AE.

 Best,
 Russ

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Sep 29, 2021 at 12:29 pm

 Check out the post again on the testing, Russ. I talked about it in great detail. Please don’t do what I advise against and ask me questions. That’s unfair. 🙂

 Reply
 9. Beth Almeida
 May 1, 2021 at 6:54 pm

 Hi Dong, Wow! This post was awesome in helping me understand (as much as I’m able) the workings of the invisible internet! But I have a question that may or may not belong right here. Forgive me ahead of time if it doesn’t.
 If I have a VERY unstable connection for a long time, say over a year of constant loss of service, dropping repeatedly 25-30 times a day, could that damage a PC? Or laptop or tablet or even a phone that is or has been connected to the internet through my gateway? I ask because -Awful Connection and all of my machines and my phone are acting super hinky. Throwing security alerts at me when I try to go online, telling me my system(s) are compromised or are being attacked. No malware of any kind to be found. I had one computer worked over by two separate tech people from local computer shops with high ratings and also at Best Buy and none of them could find a thing. Also, the computer, phone or whatever I’m using works like a champ AWAY from home, but as soon as I come home and connect one to my gateway, it’s a mess from there. They all started to mess up within a week of each other, and I don’t have them connected to each other. I am at a loss and my ISP is a word I won’t say here.
 Thanks again for this post!

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 May 2, 2021 at 7:22 am

 Your gateway has likely been hacked and it point you to wrong websites. More here. https://dongknows.com/dns-server-explained/

 Reply
 10. Adrian Lloyd
 Apr 29, 2021 at 4:15 am

 Hi Dong – I have 4 different wifi networks running (copper, 4g and 2 on Starlink (the Starlink + a wifi extender)) and wonder if there is an application that can test all 3 simultaneously or nearly simultaneously without requiring me to connect to each one, one by one in succession? It’s time consuming to do the latter and not accurate as in particular the 4g & Starlink vary a lot by time. Thanks ,Adrian

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Apr 29, 2021 at 9:26 am

 You don’t have four networks, Adrian. Those you mentioned are not all Wi-Fi. It’s a bit hard to explain since you kinda lump different things into one. Maybe start with this post about the difference between Wi-Fi and Internet.

 Reply
 o Adrian Lloyd
 Apr 30, 2021 at 1:29 am

 Thanks Dong. What I have are 4 networks my computer can connect to:
 Starlink
 4g from Vodafone
 Copper line from BT Openreach
 And then an extender which extends whichever I choose

 I am struggling to test the speed of each effectively to see which I should ultimately select to focus on as I can’t really get enough data and am after a piece of software that can measure the down and upload speeds of all these networks systematically.

 Does that make better sense?

 Adrian

 Reply
 - Dong Ngo
 Apr 30, 2021 at 3:10 am

 That still doesn’t make sense, Adrain. I can’t read minds. You need to use the same langue as I do, so to speak. 🙂 Check out the posts on networking basics on the site and be specific.

 Reply
 - Marcus Rodriguez
 Apr 30, 2021 at 3:55 am

 Why can’t you use speed test.net while connected to each one individually? If you want to test the quality of each one, you could use something like the Cisco WebEx test. Lastly, you could do a free demo for speedify which allows you to leverage all four connections at once.

 I’m really guessing at what you’re going for at this point though.

 Reply
 * Dong Ngo
 Apr 30, 2021 at 12:01 pm

 Thanks, Marcus. I think I got what Adrian was trying to say now. So here go, A:

 1. It seems you have three Internet connections one of which you use via a Wi-Fi network. So you don’t have four “networks”. Check out this post to know how Wi-Fi and Internet are different.
 2. You can use one Internet connection at a time. So to test them all simultaneously, you need to use three devices. Or you can test them one at a time.
 3. It’s generally not possible to combine multiple Internet connections into one to increase bandwidth.

 Hope this answers your questions.

 11. J
 Apr 13, 2021 at 9:17 pm

 Thank you for tagging this fantastic writeup. Very in-depth and thorough. I’ve been through a couple WiFi 6 routers now including the RT-AX86U and for the life of me, I cannot obtain over 600Mbps WiFi speeds but hard wired on all of them have been 950/950 so I’ve deduced that there must be external factors at play as both a WiFi 5 AC 160mhz laptop and S21 Ultra can’t break 600Mbps down.

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Apr 13, 2021 at 11:41 pm

 It’s likely the Jumbo Frame settings on the router and/MTU setting of your client, J. You can try turning on (or off) the Jumbo Frame on the router and see if that makes a difference. It’s in the LAN – Switch Control section within the web interface. Don’t mess around too much with these settings…

 Reply
 12. Scott
 Apr 8, 2021 at 7:55 am

 Hi Dong,

 I have ATT 1000 Mb fiber service. When I connect directly to the ATT Gateway via ethernet from a desktop, I regularly get speeds of 750-850 Mb for both upload and download. My normal setup is an RT-AC88U connected the gateway. When I test from the same desktop (same cable) through the router, I am getting 300-350 or so. I’ve tested several times of day and have tried to make sure nothing heavy is stealing bandwidth (streaming etc.). I have swapped the cable between the router and gateway a couple times (5E).

 It’s been about a year since I set all this up, and at the time I think I tested both ways but I am not 100% certain.

 Of course as you have pointed out in your other posts, I don’t really need that faster speed, but they advertised 300 Mb and 1000Mb for the same price when they rolled out the service so I thought why not. I am mostly curious if I have messed up a setting in the router.

 Thanks,

 Scott

 Reply
 + Marcus Rodriguez
 Apr 8, 2021 at 8:29 am

 I would start by making sure that when you connect the router, that both sides so the port at 1000 full.

 Assuming your firmware is up to date, I would do a hard reset (NVRAM), reprovision it, and then do another hard reset and reprovision it. I know it sounds crazy, but there are plenty of reports out there about configurations not fully wiping out and I have experienced it myself.

 I’m sure Dong will have other suggestions but that’s where I would start.

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Apr 8, 2021 at 10:14 am

 Likely you have the Jumbo Frame or MTU settings of the router and your Network card set in different values, Scott. Change the former in the router and see if that fixes it. The JF is in the LAN area of the web interface.

 Reply
 o Marcus Rodriguez
 Apr 8, 2021 at 11:14 am

 Right! I definitely got ahead of myself and that is a much easier first step 🙂

 Reply
 13. Bernard Wozny
 Feb 5, 2021 at 11:15 am

 Thank you Dong for a great article and much detail. One question though. I upgraded my old router from 2.4 Ghz to a dual band 2.4 and 5Ghz. I see that my wired and wifi laptop are still getting the same upload/download speeds of about 30/4Mbps respectively before the upgrade. I also see on the router web interface that these laptops are set at 5Ghz.
 Why don’t I see speed increases? Should I see speed increases? The gateway is connected on DSL (with filter).

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Feb 5, 2021 at 11:17 am

 Read the post again, Bernard, you’ll find out why. Internet and Wi-Fi are two different things.

 Reply
 14. Nathan Bodkin
 Jan 9, 2021 at 11:36 pm

 So I have two routers I am testing to make sure I have my new Asus AX89X setup right before I sell the Netgear RAX200. I have a gigabit internet connection. I read the posts about network setup and made sure both have 160Mhz bands enabled. I have two computers sending 1 video file thats over 2GB on a shared photo on laptop 2 with ethernet cable. Laptop 2 is downloading the file with a intel ax 200 wifi card and I got the exact same 113MB per second for both routers (They should be around 1400-1435Mbps right?). I’m pretty sure I’m bottlenecked somewhere because my internet is getting slightly speeds at 900-945Mbps with speedtest.net. Laptop one has a intel AX200 wifi 6 card. Laptop 2 has a gigabit ethernet port and cable. Both laptops have adequate M.2 NVME drives with at least 530MB read 230MB write. WAN shouldn’t be faster than LAN. What do you suggest I try next?

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Jan 10, 2021 at 12:11 am

 Your setup yields 1Gbps at best, Nathan. The number you got was correct. Keep reading, you’ll find out why. My only advice is: Don’t make assumptions! 🙂

 Reply
 o Nathan Bodkin
 Jan 10, 2021 at 8:32 pm

 Thanks for the advice. I definetely will keep reading and I thank you for taking the time. I just wanted replicate your results and 1435Mbps is quite alot different than 904Mbps considering its not using internet its all over the network. The only reason I care is because Im thinking about setuping a NAS in the future. Back to the forums. I’m gonna read everything.

 Reply
 - Dong Ngo
 Jan 11, 2021 at 2:14 am

 Here’s to save you some time, Nathan: You need to have a Multi-Gig “server” device that connects to one of the router’s 10Gbps ports.

 Reply
 * Nathan Bodkin
 Jan 12, 2021 at 11:24 am

 Thanks so much Dong! It worked. Wow what a great router.

 * Dong Ngo
 Jan 12, 2021 at 1:10 pm

 Agreed. It’s not perfect but it’s great when you have a 10Gbps server.

 15. Jerry
 Jan 7, 2021 at 2:31 pm

 Dong, i’m a big fan and have learned quite a bit from your articles.
 I have a question regarding 2 different ports in my home. I’m getting about ~90mbps and ~290mbps using SpeedTest with another port 10 feet away. I have fiber and a home run with a switch panel, and placing the router at the wall through the panel. I can’t figure it out, and I am wondering if this is simply a wall wiring issue that would reduce my signal so much.
 Appreciated in advance.

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Jan 7, 2021 at 2:36 pm

 Likely one port is a Fast Ethernet (10/100Mbps) and the other is a Gigabit (1Gbps), Jerry. More here. As to why that’s the case, check your wiring and equipment.

 Reply
 o Jerry
 Jan 8, 2021 at 8:59 am

 Understood, but they are both in the same condo unit, and that would appear strange as both are next to each other in the switch panel and then 10 feet away across the living room floor layout. Could this be a wiring problem? Perhaps one of the eight wires affected? Thoughts?
 Thanks in advance.

 Reply
 - Marcus Rodriguez
 Jan 8, 2021 at 9:46 am

 It could very well be. For example, I have a 30 foot extension that will only run at 10m. One of the pairs is bad. If you go to network and settings, then adapter properties, click on status. It will tell you what speed the port is running at. If it says 100mbps on the same computer and connected patchcord, it’s most likely a bad cable.

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 - Dong Ngo
 Jan 8, 2021 at 10:58 am

 That’s normal with bad wiring. You can just plug your computer into the port and see what the negotiated speed is.

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 16. Marcus Rodriguez
 Jan 2, 2021 at 6:07 am

 Great info here, Dong. This post is long and gets technical, so feel free to remove or edit. I’m posting it in case anyone needs to do a deeper dive into testing.

 For the more curious or advanced users or those not able to get results from nearby servers, there are some factors to consider. Most of these have been mentioned, but expanding a bit:

 Additional details regarding inconsistent or poor test results:

 1. Test hosting site server capacity. Stick to the major players like Speedtest, Google, etc. Most major ISP’s also have dedicated servers. (ATT, Comcast, Level 3, etc). Just Google them.

 2. Peering – Also related to the above, but different. This is what connects ISP to one another and others, such as Google, Facebook, Netflix, etc. When you traverse several peers to get to a server, it adds latency and unpredictability since your ISP is only responsible for its own peering links. If a server is on an ISP network with poorly managed or undersized peering links, results will be poor.

 3. Bandwidth does not equal throughput. Bandwidth is the size of the pipe. This is what you are really paying for. Throughput is the speed at which data travels through that pipe. For typical internet traffic, the further away the server is, the lesser the throughput will be. However, there are some tricks!

 4. While a single test on your connection may yield lower results, say 10m on a 100m connection, you should theoretically be able to fill the pipe with additional tests. So, I would expect to be able to do 7-9 additional tests and add them up to be in the 70-90mbps range.

 5. Your device. Older PC’s or phones with older network hardware, weak course, low memory or outdated drivers can be the culprit. At the very least, make sure all firmware, drivers, etc are up to date and test with the most modern PC you have. Borrow a neighbor’s, if needed!!!

 Test sites:

 1. Speedtest often has servers sitting on the ISP’s network. In this case, it will be the most accurate depiction of how well the ISP manages capacity, congestion, etc. Of course, the load on the test server can be a factor, but it is less of an issue today than in years past.

 2. Google’s test should yield nearly identical results. The reason for this is that Google has direct and robust peering with most major ISP’s, so there is typically only an insignificant amount of additional latency.

 3. When you hit a server outside of the ISP network, but is a know reliable test site, there is still the chance of traversing bad peering links.

 Regardless, a couple of things can be done if you’re confident you are testing to far away servers that are reputable.

 1. Perform multiple simultaneous tests. For example, Google, speedtest, Comcast, att, or whatever major isp in your area. It takes a bit of quick timing but is possible. You can also use more than one pc, since cpu utilization can be a factor. Add them up and you should see that you’re able to fill the pipe with multiple streams of data.

 2. Good old-fashioned download. Ubuntu is available for download at servers around the world. Just Google “Ubuntu mirror launchpad”. Many colleges and government entities host the files. The mirror/download site list also tells you what internet bandwidth the host has. Go for the largest ones. Then, do multiple simultaneous downloads from one site and do the math. You can also do this with multiple sites, since the server might throttle multiple requests from the same user (you). There are calculators on the web that can perform the conversion.

 I probably missed some things, but I think I’ve said enough! Happy testing!

 Marcus

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 + Dong Ngo
 Jan 2, 2021 at 9:46 am

 This one is an interesting read. Thanks for sharing Marcus.

 Reply
 o Marcus Rodriguez
 Jan 2, 2021 at 10:25 am

 My pleasure. I currently work for an ISP and have worked for several major ISP’s enterprise divisions over the past 20 years. I’ve held roles as a technician, network engineer, data center engineer, sales engineer and now sales leadership. Always happy to contribute!

 Reply
 17. Adam Non
 Dec 25, 2020 at 4:33 pm

 Is there a reason why fast.com seems to be “slower” in test results than speedtest.net?
 Also, I find the Google speed test (Mlab) seems closer to speedtest than fast.
 https://www.google.com/search?q=internet+speed+test
 What I like about speedtest is the plotted results over the duration of the test which can show burst, “shaping” and other performance or throttling intervention.

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Dec 25, 2020 at 5:44 pm

 They are all the same, Adam. They all fluctuate and the speeds vary mostly due to the server’s location or capacity.

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 o Aiyer
 Dec 28, 2020 at 1:31 am

 Testmy.net results show abysmal speed when speedtest.net shows more than contracted speed. Fast speed little lower within contracted speed

 Reply
 - Dong Ngo
 Dec 28, 2020 at 2:11 am

 That’s because Testmy.net doesn’t have a server close to where you are Aiyer. Use Speedtest.net. It has the best selection of servers. Or just use the test of Google.

 Reply
 + TechUnsupport
 Dec 26, 2020 at 10:40 am

 Think of all the website speed test this way, use them all, which ever the fastest is the most accurate. Where ever you are the speed test server is not your ISP and your ISP only responsible between you and them and whatever ISP or the tier network they are directly connected to.

 If you are driving from your house to a grocery store. Your ISP own the street that your house is on and if there is a construction on one of the street between your street and your favorite grocery store street are on then there is nothing you or you ISP can do about it. But if you go to a different grocery store about the same distance or even a little farther then your speed would improve. But in term of speed, generally sparking the best grocery store would be the one closest to you, all the speed test websites follow the same logic assuming there is nothing else wrong in between you and them.

 Reply
 18. Jayakumar R
 Dec 1, 2020 at 2:26 am

 Dear Ngo,

 I live in Singapore.

 When the speed test using ISP server states the D/L and U/L speeds to be
 70 & 50 Mbps, the Wi-Fi speed per Windows 10 shows only, D/L and U/L
 speeds like 0.00X and 0.00Y Mbps. Why such a vast variation?

 It appears that the speed test data is of no relevance in actual upload and downloads. Is it the case?

 I called the ISP tech support numerous times, but they have no answer.

 Kindly share your knowledge.

 Thanks for your contributions.

 I wish you the best of everything in life.

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Dec 1, 2020 at 10:13 am

 Wi-Fi has nothing to do with an operating system, Jay. It seems like there’s something wrong with your Windows 10 machine you used for the testing if I understood you correctly. Try picking a test server near you?

 Reply
 19. DP
 Nov 27, 2020 at 12:43 pm

 Have a google mesh setup currently and 1000mb fiber connection. Looking to upgrade to wifi 6 debating a mesh or the asus rtax86u. I’m not even sure mesh is necessary for me in 1600sq ft home but I really just want to get closer to the speeds I pay for wirelessly. Running some wifi6 and wifi5 devices about 20 devices total. What mesh would you recommend? Or would you say the asus is a better bet. Thanks

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Nov 27, 2020 at 1:07 pm

 You can start with the RT-AX86U now and add another unit later if need be, DP. Or if your home is not wired, go with the GT-AX11000 tri-band router. More here.

 Reply
 o DP
 Nov 27, 2020 at 1:12 pm

 Thanks! My home is not wired I do try and plug in as much as possible to avoid wifi. I have an 8 port unmanaged switch which helps. So you think a mesh system will be overkill? I just want to make sure that all my outdoor wifi cameras get a signal as well but sounds like you think creating an ai mesh setup if needed is a better option. Thanks

 Reply
 - DP
 Nov 27, 2020 at 1:20 pm

 Also could I get the ax92u ax6100 or is that not as good as the ax11000? One was 12 streams and one was 6. Just a big price difference.

 Reply
 * Dong Ngo
 Nov 27, 2020 at 4:31 pm

 Here are the reviews of the RT-AX92U and GT-AX11000, DP. Check them out and see the differences for yourself. Also, don’t get too hung up on the number of streams. More here.

 20. Darryl
 Oct 21, 2020 at 1:12 pm

 Hello Dong,
 I hope you can point me in the right direction once again. In preparation for installing a new AX86u I ran some benchmark tests with my old AC86u.
 I checked the speed with Ookla and timed the download of a file from my NAS. I did the same tests with my old samsung tablet with N wifi and also with my new S6 Lite tablet that has AC wifi. The old tablet was twice as fast in all tests. When I look at the Network properties in my setting on each device the new tab shows a network speed of 72Mbps and the old tab shows 150Mbps.
 Nothing seems right to me. Is there anything you can point me to?
 Thanks
 Darryl

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Oct 21, 2020 at 2:12 pm

 If you intend to use legacy devices, Darryl, then a Wi-Fi 5 router is always better. More here.

 Reply
 21. Bimmer
 Aug 28, 2020 at 9:51 am

 Hi Dong,

 Your site is very informative especially to non-tech guys like me. Maybe you can help me with my issue. I just moved to a new gigabit provider. I also had a gigabit service from the previous one. I have a Nighthawk RA200 AX11000 router. Instead of a cable modem (Netgear CM1000), i now have a Fiber ONT that I connect my router. What I am having issue with is that I only get half the download speed on wifi now as compared to my previous provider. I understand that previously, i get an asymmetric service as compared to symmetric right now. Prior to moving to the new provider, i clocked my download speed at 645mbps, up 9.8mbps. After the install of the new provider, download 277mbps, upload 488mbps. Is there something I need to configure on my router to at least bring up the download speed?
 Thanks!

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Aug 28, 2020 at 10:11 am

 Assuming your ISP delivers, Bim, (you can check to make sure by doing a proper test directly from the ONT), I’d recommended a couple of things:

 1. Update your router to the latest firmware.
 2. Reset it to default factory settings and set it up from scratch. There might have been some settings applicable only to the previous internet plan.
 3. Use the router’s 2.5 Gbps port as it WAN port.

 Reply
 22. Darryl Steeves
 Aug 25, 2020 at 7:59 pm

 Hi Dong,
 I think I was testing my speed incorrectly before when I was getting some wonky real low numbers. I was always selecting the server from my ISP rather than letting Ookla select automatically the server with a low ping.

 Do I understand correctly that I should let Ookla select automatically?

 Thanks
 Darryl

 Reply
 23. Dante
 Apr 24, 2020 at 1:41 pm

 What exactly is a gigabit network port? I want to test my wifi speed using my MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports)…I have an adapter that will let me plug an Ethernet cable into my MacBook. Is that sufficient enough for to test (somewhat accurately) my wifi speed?

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Apr 24, 2020 at 2:31 pm

 If that’s a Gigabit adapter, Dante. More on Gigabit here. Many Mac network adapters are 10/100 (or Fast Ethernet).

 Reply
 24. mama bear
 Nov 26, 2019 at 3:41 pm

 Howdy! Do you know if they make any plugins to help with Search Engine Optimization? I’m trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted keywords but
 I’m not seeing very good results. If you know of any please share.
 Thanks!

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Nov 26, 2019 at 3:56 pm

 You can use Yoast SEO. Good luck! 🙂

 Reply
 25. Joey
 Nov 1, 2019 at 8:11 am

 In your view which 5 GHz channel do you find to offer the best performance? I find that Channel 52 and 100 offer superior performance to the others…

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Nov 1, 2019 at 9:27 am

 This depends on the WiFi standard, the time of day and especially where you are. The two channels you mentioned are both DFS and might not be available in certain places.

 Reply
 26. alexndh
 May 24, 2019 at 6:02 pm

 Hi Dong,
 A Vietnamese news website copies your post without introducing the source. Just FYI, in case you’re not aware.

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 May 24, 2019 at 6:19 pm

 That’s both sad and upsetting. Thanks for letting me know, Alex.

 Reply
 27. Tony
 Apr 7, 2019 at 3:49 pm

 Hi Dong, I have an Aimesh with an AC86U as my main router. How do I make the 5GHz band work only with 802.11ac clients and the 2.4GHz band just for 802.11n clients? Thanks!

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Apr 8, 2019 at 9:36 am

 You need to turn off the SmartConnect mode (It’s in Wireless section under Advanced Settings) then change the Wireless Mode for each band accordingly. You can choose to name the two bands differently or the same (in this case make sure the password — WPA Pre-Shared Key — is the same too.)

 Reply
 28. heidarren
 Jan 6, 2019 at 12:31 pm

 I would like to know what 5GHz channel that you are using? Asus (exp. AC86U) is well known as working well in channel 149~161 and Netgear (exp XR500) works well in channel 36~48. Also, what region did you set to those router in Wi-Fi setup (AC86U great in Australia region and XR500 great in US region )? This make major changes as many reviewers use these channels and region trick to “promote” some sponsored routers by putting it to the optimized position to make it looks great (Australia AC86U in channel 149~161 wins XR500 and US XR500 in channel 36~48 wins AC86U) , too tricky in this industry, I hope I can finally find the trustworthy site which disclose it all for the testing setup, thanks

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Jan 6, 2019 at 12:34 pm

 Hi there,

 Thanks for your input. I actually test routers using ALL channels, one after another, as well as using the Auto setting, which is generally the default. I report the highest scores.

 Hope this helps, 🙂

 -Dong.

 Reply
 29. xskip
 Dec 21, 2018 at 3:04 pm

 Thank you. Love your reviews and tips.

 p.s.
 BluRay not Blue. 🙂

 Happy Holidays

 Reply
 + Dong Ngo
 Dec 21, 2018 at 3:20 pm

 You’re welcome! And thanks for the correction! Happy holidays to you too! 🙂

 Reply

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 Table of Contents

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 * Why you should care about your Internet speed
 + Internet connection explained
 o Internet speed: Upload vs. download
 o Packet loss
 o Lag (or latency): Ping vs. jitter
 + How to do a real Internet speed test
 o What you need to do a real Internet speed test
 + How to test a router’s Wi-Fi speed test
 o What you need to do a real Wi-Fi speed test
 * The takeaway
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At one point or another, you might have wondered how to do a proper Wi-Fi speed test or the right way to figure out how fast your Internet connection is. 
In this post, you'll find out what an Internet connection entails and how to figure out the absolute speeds of your connections. Take "absolute" with a big grain of salt, though, since these speeds vary greatly.
The method mentioned here is also what I use for official testing in all networking reviews on this website.
Before we continue, ensure you understand that Wi-Fi and the Internet are two different things. As a result, using one to test the other can be problematic.
 Dong's note: I first published this post on December 19, 2018, and last updated it on November 9, 2022, to include additional relevant information. 
 Internet or Wi-Fi Speed Test: Figuring out those numbers can be challenging.  
     Why you should care about your Internet speed   Internet connection explained   Internet speed: Upload vs. download   Packet loss   Lag (or latency): Ping vs. jitter     How to do a real Internet speed test   What you need to do a real Internet speed test     How to test a router’s Wi-Fi speed test   What you need to do a real Wi-Fi speed test       The takeaway    
Why you should care about your Internet speed
It's generally helpful to know how fast your Internet is. Faster always seems better, but you only need certain speed grades to do specific tasks. 
Above a certain speed grade, where the connection is fast enough for even the most demanding application, broadband speed testing should be used only to confirm the paid bandwidth. It's meaningless otherwise. 
Take video streaming—one of the most bandwidth-taxing online activities—for example; you'll generally need a minimum download speed of:
3-4 Megabits per second for DVD quality or face timing on a phone screen.
5Mbps for HD quality.
25Mbps for Blu-ray (4K) quality.
80Mbps for 8K video.
Keep in mind that this is the speed required by a single stream. If you have more than one person streaming simultaneously, you generally need to multiply those numbers with the concurrent clients to determine the necessary real-time bandwidth. 
Also, there are a lot more online applications than streaming. Some of these applications—such as automatic updates—even occur within a connected device without you getting involved. 
So yes, again, faster Internet is always better. But there's more than the download speed on the Internet.
Internet connection explained
When testing an Internet connection, you'll get two main numbers, download and upload—sometimes they are called downlink and uplink. And you might also see a few other values, including ping, jitter, and packet loss. 
Following is the breakdown of what they mean.
Internet speed: Upload vs. download
 Download speed represents how fast you can pull things from outside your local network. 
That said, streaming a movie, surfing a website, downloading a file, getting an email, etc., use the download pipe.
In a speed test, download is the speed the test device (a computer or a phone) pulls information from the remote server that hosts the test data.
 Upload represents the speed of the opposite direction. 
Things like sending an email, posting a photo or comment to Facebook, saving a file to Google Drive, using cloud-recording/smart devices, etc., use the upload pipe.
While we use more of the download pipe, data transmission—delivered in small portions called packets—needs both directions to work. That's because your computer uses the upload pipe to confirm to the remote server that it has received a packet and is ready for the next one. 
That said, when the upload pipe is clogged up, you can't download anything. 
In a Cable broadband connection, the download speed tends to be much faster than the upload speed. But you might get the same rate for both directions with a Fiber-optic service.
Still, suppose somebody is seeding a torrent file or uploading a large amount of information without limiting the upload speed for the task. In that case, others might not be able to download anything. Keep that in mind. 
Cloud-recording security cameras, like those from Google or Arlo, and "smart devices" can put a massive strain on the upload. Don't use them if you have a modest broadband connection. In this case, you might need to conserve your Internet bandwidth. )
 Packet loss 
As the name suggests, packet loss happens when a packet of data is either not received or partially received. 
Most of the time, this results from a bad physical connection or incompatible MTU settings. In this case, the packet will be resent. Packet loss shouldn't be higher than 1 percent.
Lag (or latency): Ping vs. jitter
Both ping and jitter relate to the delay in a connection, but they are slightly different.
 Ping is the fixed latency (a.k.a lag) at a given time—in a speed test, it's generally measured at the beginning. It's the amount of time, shown in milliseconds, needed for a data packet from one party to reach another or vice versa. 
The shorter your ping is, the better your Internet connection is for applications that require real-time interaction, such as Wi-Fi calling or online gaming. Generally, a ping of 15ms or shorter is considered excellent.
 Jitter, often called Packet Delay Variation (PDV) or ping variations, measures ping values over time—the entire test. 
In other words, if every packet takes the exact amount of time—no matter how long—to arrive at the destination, then there's no jitter. 
The higher the jitter value, the more likely a packet loss will occur. The jitter value should be below 30ms and is generally below 10ms.
How to do a real Internet speed test
There are many speed testing websites, such as Speedof.me, Fast.com, or Speedtest.net, for you to choose from. But don't get too obsessed about which to use. They all use the same test methodology. 
And no matter which you use, the results will vary due to the server's location (and Internet speed). So pick one that's best for your location, and in that sense, Speedtest.net is excellent—it's ubiquitously available with many servers of different speed grades.
Since you're on this page, do a quick test right now. 
 
	⏱️ Dong Knows Tech custom Speed Test transfers data between your device and an Ookla test server
	 
So how fast is it? Totally fast, and you're happy with it? Good for you! You can move on now. But if it's not what you expected, keep in mind that chances are it's not your correct Internet speed anyway.
If you were using a phone's cellular connection during the test, that was indeed your Internet's actual speed. However, mobile Internet speed continuously varies greatly depending on where you are.
Let me explain. When you did the test, there might have been other devices in the network, also using part of the connection's bandwidth. 
If you have an ultra-high-speed broadband plan, the local Wi-Fi or your computer's wired connection might not be fast enough to deliver the Internet bandwidth fully.
That said, to find out the real speed of your broadband connection, you must prepare before the testing.
   Your Internet speed is generally most correct at the terminal device, such as your Cable modem or Fiber-optic ONT, at your home's broadband drop. Specifically, you want to connect the test equipment to the network port of the terminal device—in the photos above, it's the yellow or white network cable, respectively. 
What you need to do a real Internet speed test
To test your broadband connection, you need to do that at the source—the terminal device—using hardware of the same speed grade or, preferably, significantly faster than the expected Internet speed. 
The point is that if the equipment is the bottleneck, the test result will be the speed of the equipment itself.
Specifically, here is what you need:
A test computer with a network port: A Gigabit port is usually OK, but if you want to test a full Gigabit, Gig+, or faster broadband connection, a Multi-Gig-capable (2.5Gbps, 5Gbps, 10Gbps) computer is a must. That means, in most cases, you need a desktop with a 10Gbps PCIe internal adapter or a Thunderbolt laptop with a 10Gbps external adapter. 
CAT6a or higher grade cables: Generally, CAT5e cable can deliver up to 10Gbps, but for testing, it's best to use CAT6a or higher grade to make sure.
(Optional) a router capable of Multi-Gig on both WAN and LAN sides: This applies only if you want to test the connection via (behind) the router. In this case, turn off any bandwidth-related features of the router, such as QoS, bandwidth limiter, traffic monitor, security, parental control, etc. So, a multi-Gigabit router is recommended, but if you have a sub-Gigabit broadband connection, a Gigabit router will do.
After that, here's how to connect the devices for the test:
Connect the test machine directly to the Internet terminal device, a modem, a gateway, or a Fiber ONT, using a network cable. The objective is to remove all middle devices, like a slow switch or router, that can be the bottleneck.
(Optional) If you use a router, make sure you connect its fastest ports for both the WAN—the terminal device—and the LAN side, which is your test computer. Generally, the speed test function of a router (via its web user interface or mobile app) is only for reference and is never correct due to various reasons.
Check to ensure the computer is the only device using the broadband connection during the test. If the Internet source is a gateway, make sure you disconnect all other devices from it (unplug all other network cables and turn off its Wi-Fi).
And that's it! Now on the test computer, do a few speed tests as you did earlier. Pick test servers that are geographically closest to you to make sure. The number you get is your real Internet speed.
You'll likely still get a different result each time you do a test. That's just how the Internet is. Feel free to use the highest number as your broadband score. 
Now, if it's still significantly lower than your broadband plan, it's time to call the provider to complain. 
Again this complicated real test is to make sure you get what the ISP promises you. Generally, you only need to do a random test on any device to determine the connection speed at any given time, and if it's fast enough, there's no need to do anything else.
How to test a router’s Wi-Fi speed test
There are many Wi-Fi speed test apps. None of these are accurate for a couple of reasons.
First, mobile devices almost always optimize their Wi-Fi adapter for power consumption and not performance to conserve battery life—the former is way more important in real-world usage.
Second, none of these apps can move data between itself and another local device to replicate what users do in real life. They are all synthetic. 
That said, avoid using speed test apps if you want to know how fast your local Wi-Fi speed really is. 
And you shouldn't use Internet speed test apps to test the local Wi-Fi speed, either. In most cases, a router's Wi-Fi speed is likely much faster than the speed of a broadband connection. Even when you have ultra-fast Internet, many variations in the World Wide Web can adversely affect broadband speeds. The gist is that it's rarely accurate, if at all, to use the Internet to test your Wi-Fi's throughputs. 
 Note on speed testing using a phone 
It's OK to use a phone to do a speed test via an app as long as you don't take the result as the true indicator of your Wi-Fi or broadband speed. Instead, consider the number as the phone's real-time general connection speed. And that information can be helpful enough.
If your Internet or the Wi-Fi connection is faster than a particular speed grade, say 500Mbps, and you want to figure out the actual speed, you need to test it via a computer with the fastest network and Wi-Fi adapter to make sure.
The best way to determine a router's Wi-Fi speed is to copy data from one computer (a server) to another (a Wi-Fi client) within the local network, using a single wired-to-wireless connection. 
If you use multiple Wi-Fi clients for the testing, the router's Wi-Fi bandwidth is shared; therefore, you can't determine how fast its Wi-Fi can genuinely be. That's not to mention other factors, such as software driver or hardware grades.
And that means, again, you need to do some preparation.
What you need to do a real Wi-Fi speed test
In my experience, the real-world speed of Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac), even at its best, has never surpassed the sustained rate of a wired Gigabit connection. But starting with Wi-Fi 6, the wireless connection can be significantly faster at optimal settings and distances.
In any case, keep this in mind: The connection speed between a pair of network devices is at the mercy of the lowest party involved. The rate you see is that of the bottleneck device—if that's the device you want to test, then your result is correct.
That said, these are what you need to test a device's Wi-Fi speed:
A computer that plays the server's role and hosts the test data. This computer must have a Gigabit network port—or a 10 Gigabit Ethernet port if you intend to test a Wi-Fi 6 router—and use a solid-state drive as its storage. Connect this computer to the fastest LAN port of the Wi-Fi router you want to test. (If the router doesn't support Gigabit, you can forget about it. It's already too slow, anyway). Now on this server computer, share the folder that contains the test data so that it's accessible to other computers that connect to the same router.
A second computer—be it a laptop or a desktop—to play the Wi-Fi client's role. This computer must have the highest-end (fastest possible) Wi-Fi adapter of at least the same speed grate as the router. This computer should also use a solid-state drive as its storage. Connect this computer to the Wi-Fi network of the router. Make sure you  separate the bands  when possible, be it 2.4GHz, 5GHz, or 6GHz, into different SSID to know which band is being tested.
And that's it! Now from the second computer (the Wi-Fi client), browse for the shared folder on the server and copy the data. Time how long that process takes, do some simple math with the amount of data involved, and you'll figure out how fast the connection is.
For example, if the data you copy is 2000 megabytes and the copy process takes 30 seconds, the speed is 66.7 megabytes per second or 533.6 Mbps.
You can move the Wi-Fi client around to find out how the distances—between the router and the client—affect the Wi-Fi speed.
Similar to Internet speed, the Wi-Fi speed also tends to fluctuate. That said, feel free to pick the highest number of the same location as your router's speed.
The takeaway
Again, unless you need to find out the actual speed of a Wi-Fi broadcaster or your broadband, for one reason or another, there's no need to work very hard at it. Most of the time, a quick speed test is enough. 
Ultimately, we only need the connection to be as fast as the application being used requires. Above that, the extra bandwidth will not amount to anything meaningful.
Internet or Wi-Fi Speed Test: Get it 100% Right Today | Dong Knows Tech
https://dongknows.com/how-to-do-an-internet-or-wi-fi-speed-test/
https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.0/
Runs / Minute
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<div><div>
 
 <section>
 <p>
 Speedometer is a browser benchmark that measures the responsiveness of Web applications.
 It uses demo web applications to simulate user actions such as adding to-do items.
 </p>
 <p><strong>
 Your browser window is too small. For most accurate results, please make the view port size at least 850px by 650px.<br />
 It's currently .
 </strong></p>
 
 <p>About Speedometer</p>
 </section>
 
 <section>
 <h2>Runs / Minute</h2>
 
 <hr />
 
 
 
 </section>
 <section>
 <h2>Detailed Results</h2>
 
 
 <p>Arithmetic Mean:</p>
 
 <p>About Speedometer</p>
 </section>
 <section>
 
 <p>Speedometer tests a browser's Web app responsiveness by timing simulated user interactions.</p>
 <p>
 This benchmark simulates user actions for adding, completing, and removing to-do items using multiple examples in TodoMVC.
 Each example in TodoMVC implements the same todo application using DOM APIs in different ways.
 Some call DOM APIs directly from ECMAScript 5 (ES5), ECMASCript 2015 (ES6), ES6 transpiled to ES5, and Elm transpiled to ES5.
 Others use one of eleven popular JavaScript frameworks: React, React with Redux, Ember.js, Backbone.js,
 AngularJS, (new) Angular, Vue.js, jQuery, Preact, Inferno, and Flight.
 Many of these frameworks are used on the most popular websites in the world, such as Facebook and Twitter.
 The performance of these types of operations depends on the speed of the DOM APIs, the JavaScript engine,
 CSS style resolution, layout, and other technologies.
 </p>
 <p>
 Although user-driven actions like mouse movements and keyboard input cannot be accurately emulated in JavaScript,
 Speedometer does its best to faithfully replay a typical workload within the demo applications.
 To make the run time long enough to measure with the limited precision,
 we synchronously execute a large number of the operations, such as adding one hundred to-do items.
 </p>
 <p>
 Modern browser engines execute some work asynchronously as an optimization strategy to reduce the run time of synchronous operations.
 While returning control back to JavaScript execution as soon as possible is worth pursuing,
 the run time cost of such an asynchronous work should still be taken into a holistic measurement of web application performance.
 In addition, some modern JavaScript frameworks such as Vue.js and Preact call into DOM APIs asynchronously as an optimization technique.
 Speedometer approximates the run time of this asynchronous work in the UI thread with a zero-second timer
 that is scheduled immediately after each execution of synchronous operations.
 </p>
 <p>
 Speedometer does not attempt to measure concurrent asynchronous work that does not directly impact the UI thread,
 which tends not to affect app responsiveness.
 </p>
 <p>
 <strong>Note:</strong> Speedometer should not be used as a way to compare the performance of different JavaScript frameworks
 as work load differs greatly in each framework.
 </p>
 </section>
</div>||||I||||Speedometer is a browser benchmark that measures the responsiveness of Web applications. It uses demo web applications to simulate user actions such as adding to-do items.

Your browser window is too small. For most accurate results, please make the view port size at least 850px by 650px.
It's currently .

 Start Test

About Speedometer

Runs / Minute

 Test Again Details

Detailed Results





 Arithmetic Mean:
 Test Again Summary

About Speedometer

About Speedometer 2.0

Speedometer tests a browser's Web app responsiveness by timing simulated user interactions.

This benchmark simulates user actions for adding, completing, and removing to-do items using multiple examples in TodoMVC. Each example in TodoMVC implements the same todo application using DOM APIs in different ways. Some call DOM APIs directly from ECMAScript 5 (ES5), ECMASCript 2015 (ES6), ES6 transpiled to ES5, and Elm transpiled to ES5. Others use one of eleven popular JavaScript frameworks: React, React with Redux, Ember.js, Backbone.js, AngularJS, (new) Angular, Vue.js, jQuery, Preact, Inferno, and Flight. Many of these frameworks are used on the most popular websites in the world, such as Facebook and Twitter. The performance of these types of operations depends on the speed of the DOM APIs, the JavaScript engine, CSS style resolution, layout, and other technologies.

Although user-driven actions like mouse movements and keyboard input cannot be accurately emulated in JavaScript, Speedometer does its best to faithfully replay a typical workload within the demo applications. To make the run time long enough to measure with the limited precision, we synchronously execute a large number of the operations, such as adding one hundred to-do items.

Modern browser engines execute some work asynchronously as an optimization strategy to reduce the run time of synchronous operations. While returning control back to JavaScript execution as soon as possible is worth pursuing, the run time cost of such an asynchronous work should still be taken into a holistic measurement of web application performance. In addition, some modern JavaScript frameworks such as Vue.js and Preact call into DOM APIs asynchronously as an optimization technique. Speedometer approximates the run time of this asynchronous work in the UI thread with a zero-second timer that is scheduled immediately after each execution of synchronous operations.

Speedometer does not attempt to measure concurrent asynchronous work that does not directly impact the UI thread, which tends not to affect app responsiveness.

Note: Speedometer should not be used as a way to compare the performance of different JavaScript frameworks as work load differs greatly in each framework.

Speedometer is a browser benchmark that measures the responsiveness of Web applications.
 It uses demo web applications to simulate user actions such as adding to-do items.
 
  
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 About Speedometer
 
 
 
 Runs / Minute
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Detailed Results
 
 
 Arithmetic Mean:
 
 About Speedometer
 
 
 
 Speedometer tests a browser's Web app responsiveness by timing simulated user interactions.
 
 This benchmark simulates user actions for adding, completing, and removing to-do items using multiple examples in TodoMVC.
 Each example in TodoMVC implements the same todo application using DOM APIs in different ways.
 Some call DOM APIs directly from ECMAScript 5 (ES5), ECMASCript 2015 (ES6), ES6 transpiled to ES5, and Elm transpiled to ES5.
 Others use one of eleven popular JavaScript frameworks: React, React with Redux, Ember.js, Backbone.js,
 AngularJS, (new) Angular, Vue.js, jQuery, Preact, Inferno, and Flight.
 Many of these frameworks are used on the most popular websites in the world, such as Facebook and Twitter.
 The performance of these types of operations depends on the speed of the DOM APIs, the JavaScript engine,
 CSS style resolution, layout, and other technologies.
 
 
 Although user-driven actions like mouse movements and keyboard input cannot be accurately emulated in JavaScript,
 Speedometer does its best to faithfully replay a typical workload within the demo applications.
 To make the run time long enough to measure with the limited precision,
 we synchronously execute a large number of the operations, such as adding one hundred to-do items.
 
 
 Modern browser engines execute some work asynchronously as an optimization strategy to reduce the run time of synchronous operations.
 While returning control back to JavaScript execution as soon as possible is worth pursuing,
 the run time cost of such an asynchronous work should still be taken into a holistic measurement of web application performance.
 In addition, some modern JavaScript frameworks such as Vue.js and Preact call into DOM APIs asynchronously as an optimization technique.
 Speedometer approximates the run time of this asynchronous work in the UI thread with a zero-second timer
 that is scheduled immediately after each execution of synchronous operations.
 
 
 Speedometer does not attempt to measure concurrent asynchronous work that does not directly impact the UI thread,
 which tends not to affect app responsiveness.
 
 
 Note: Speedometer should not be used as a way to compare the performance of different JavaScript frameworks
 as work load differs greatly in each framework.
Runs / Minute
https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.0/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_speed_test
Browser speed test - Wikipedia
2010-06-08
None
<div><div>
	<p>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>
	</div><div>
<p>A <b>browser speed test</b> is a <a href="/wiki/Computer_benchmark">computer benchmark</a> that scores the performance of a <a href="/wiki/Web_browser">web browser</a>, by measuring the browser's efficiency in completing a predefined list of tasks. In general the testing software is available online, located on a website, where different algorithms are loaded and performed in the browser client. Typical test tasks are rendering and animation, <a href="/wiki/Document_Object_Model">DOM</a> transformations, string operations, mathematical calculations, <a href="/wiki/Sorting_algorithm">sorting algorithms</a>, graphic performance tests and memory instructions.
Browser speed tests have been used during <a href="/wiki/Browser_wars">browser wars</a> to prove superiority of specific web browsers. The popular <a href="/wiki/Acid3">Acid3</a> test is no particular speed test but checks browser conformity to web standards (though it checks whether a general performance goal is met).
</p>
<h2>General tests[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Browser_speed_test&amp;action=edit&amp;section=1">edit</a>]</h2>
<h3>Speedometer 2.0[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Browser_speed_test&amp;action=edit&amp;section=2">edit</a>]</h3>
<p>Speedometer was originally developed by the WebKit team at Apple and released in 2014 and was updated in 2018.<sup><a href="#cite_note-1">[1]</a></sup> <a href="https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.0/">Speedometer 2.0</a> tests a browser's Web app responsiveness by timing simulated user interactions.
</p><p>This benchmark simulates user actions for adding, completing, and removing to-do items using multiple examples in TodoMVC. Each example in TodoMVC implements the same todo application using DOM APIs in different ways. Some call DOM APIs directly from ECMAScript 5 (ES5), ECMASCript 2015 (ES6), ES6 transpiled to ES5, and Elm transpiled to ES5. Others use one of eleven popular JavaScript frameworks: React, React with Redux, Ember.js, Backbone.js, AngularJS, (new) Angular, Vue.js, jQuery, Preact, Inferno, and Flight. Many of these frameworks are used on the most popular websites in the world, such as Facebook and Twitter. The performance of these types of operations depends on the speed of the DOM APIs, the JavaScript engine, CSS style resolution, layout, and other technologies.
</p>
<h3>Peacekeeper[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Browser_speed_test&amp;action=edit&amp;section=3">edit</a>]</h3>
<p>Peacekeeper is a platform-independent benchmark by <a href="/wiki/Futuremark">Futuremark</a> that tests rendering, mathematical and memory operations. It takes approx. 5 minutes for execution and tells the results of other browsers with different CPUs. Futuremark stopped maintaining Peacekeeper in July 2015.<sup><a href="#cite_note-2">[2]</a></sup> The test was taken offline in March 2018 and is no longer available.
</p>
<h3><a href="http://speed-battle.com/speedtest_e.php">Speed-Battle</a>[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Browser_speed_test&amp;action=edit&amp;section=4">edit</a>]</h3>
<p>Test of a JavaScript engine using simple algorithms. It displays results of other visitors (best, average, poorest) with the same operating system and browser version.<sup><a href="#cite_note-3">[3]</a></sup> It has an additional statistics page with browser ranking.
</p>
<h3>Testdrive[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Browser_speed_test&amp;action=edit&amp;section=5">edit</a>]</h3>
<p>Microsoft maintains a suite of performance-oriented tests, often designed to test and stress JavaScript and rendering performance. These tests are typically designed to highlight <a href="/wiki/Internet_Explorer">IE</a>'s performance<sup>[<i><a href="/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed">citation needed</a></i>]</sup>, but are compatible with other major browsers.
</p>
<h3>WebXPRT[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Browser_speed_test&amp;action=edit&amp;section=6">edit</a>]</h3>
<p><a href="https://www.principledtechnologies.com/benchmarkxprt/webxprt/">WebXPRT</a> is a cross-platform browser benchmark that runs HTML5- and JavaScript-based workloads.<sup><a href="#cite_note-4">[4]</a></sup> The benchmark provides scores for six individual workloads, as well as an overall score.<sup><a href="#cite_note-5">[5]</a></sup> WebXPRT is published by the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community, which is administered by Principled Technologies, and is one of the BenchmarkXPRT benchmarks. WebXPRT 3 is the most current version of WebXPRT.<sup><a href="#cite_note-6">[6]</a></sup>
</p>
<h2>3D tests[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Browser_speed_test&amp;action=edit&amp;section=7">edit</a>]</h2>
<h3>Wirple BMark[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Browser_speed_test&amp;action=edit&amp;section=8">edit</a>]</h3>
<p>Performance test for <a href="/wiki/HTML5">HTML5</a> 3D applications. It tests performance in both <a href="/wiki/Canvas3D">Canvas3D</a> and <a href="/wiki/WebGL">WebGL</a>.
</p>
<h2>Developer suites[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Browser_speed_test&amp;action=edit&amp;section=9">edit</a>]</h2>
<h3>Mozilla benchmarks[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Browser_speed_test&amp;action=edit&amp;section=10">edit</a>]</h3>
<h4>Dromaeo (superseded by <a href="https://krakenbenchmark.mozilla.org/">Kraken</a>)[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Browser_speed_test&amp;action=edit&amp;section=11">edit</a>]</h4>
<p>A Mozilla test suite based on SunSpider tests. It takes several minutes for execution and displays very detailed information about every single test task.
</p>
<h4><a href="https://mozilla.github.io/krakenbenchmark.mozilla.org/index.html">Kraken</a> (active)[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Browser_speed_test&amp;action=edit&amp;section=12">edit</a>]</h4>
<p>Another JavaScript test suite from Mozilla, released September 14, 2010.<sup><a href="#cite_note-7">[7]</a></sup>
</p>
<h3>Apple benchmarks[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Browser_speed_test&amp;action=edit&amp;section=13">edit</a>]</h3>
<h4><a href="https://browserbench.org/JetStream1.1/">JetStream</a> (active)[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Browser_speed_test&amp;action=edit&amp;section=14">edit</a>]</h4>
<p>A JavaScript test suite developed by Apple.<sup><a href="#cite_note-heath2015-8">[8]</a></sup>
</p>
<h4>SunSpider (superseded)[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Browser_speed_test&amp;action=edit&amp;section=15">edit</a>]</h4>
<p>SunSpider is a benchmark created by the webkit team that aims to measure JavaScript performance on tasks relevant to the current and near future use of JavaScript in the real world, such as encryption and text manipulation.<sup><a href="#cite_note-9">[9]</a></sup> The suite further attempts to be balanced and statistically sound.<sup><a href="#cite_note-10">[10]</a></sup>
</p><p>Version 0.9 was released by the WebKit team in December 2007.<sup><a href="#cite_note-11">[11]</a></sup> It was well-received,<sup><a href="#cite_note-12">[12]</a></sup> and other browser developers also use it to compare the JavaScript performance of different browsers.<sup><a href="#cite_note-13">[13]</a></sup>
</p><p>Version 0.9.1 was released in April 2010.<sup><a href="#cite_note-14">[14]</a></sup>
</p><p>Version 1.0 was released in April 2013.<sup><a href="#cite_note-15">[15]</a></sup>
</p>
<h3>Google benchmarks[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Browser_speed_test&amp;action=edit&amp;section=16">edit</a>]</h3>
<h4>V8 (superseded)[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Browser_speed_test&amp;action=edit&amp;section=17">edit</a>]</h4>
<p>A JavaScript test suite by <a href="/wiki/Google">Google</a>, used to optimize the <a href="/wiki/Google_Chrome">Google Chrome</a> web browser. It does not test rendering performance. It was superseded by Google's Octane benchmark.
</p>
<h4>Octane (unmaintained)[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Browser_speed_test&amp;action=edit&amp;section=18">edit</a>]</h4>
<p>Google's JavaScript test suite which replaces the V8 benchmark. According to Google, "Octane v.1 consists of 13 tests, 5 new ones and 8 from the original V8 Benchmark Suite."<sup><a href="#cite_note-16">[16]</a></sup> Octane v.2 supplanted v.1, consisting of "17 tests, four more than Octane v1."<sup><a href="#cite_note-17">[17]</a></sup>
</p><p>As of April 12 2017, Google no longer maintains Octane.<sup><a href="#cite_note-18">[18]</a></sup>
</p>
<h3>GUIMark 2[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Browser_speed_test&amp;action=edit&amp;section=19">edit</a>]</h3>
<p>This tests vector, bitmap, and text rendering for both Adobe Flash and HTML5.
</p>
<h2>References[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Browser_speed_test&amp;action=edit&amp;section=20">edit</a>]</h2>
<div>
<ol>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-1">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://webkit.org/blog/8063/speedometer-2-0-a-benchmark-for-modern-web-app-responsiveness/">"Speedometer 2.0: A Benchmark for Modern Web App Responsiveness"</a>. 15 January 2018.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-2">^</a></b> <cite>Brinkmann, Martin (23 July 2015). <a href="http://www.ghacks.net/2015/07/23/futuremark-ends-support-for-peacekeeper-benchmark/">"Futuremark ends support for Peacekeeper benchmark"</a>. Ghacks. Retrieved 7 February 2017.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-3">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://www.ejigsaw.co.uk/news/googles-impending-ranking-factor-mobile-site-speed/">"Google Ranking Factor | Mobile Site Speed | News | eJIGSAW®"</a>. <i>eJIGSAW®</i>. 2018-03-19. Retrieved 2018-03-21.</cite><sup>[<i><a href="/wiki/Wikipedia:Link_rot">permanent dead link</a></i>]</sup>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-4">^</a></b> <cite>Hachmann, Mark (28 November 2018). <a href="https://www.pcworld.com/article/3323059/samsung-galaxy-book-2-tablet-hands-on-performance-takes-a-backseat-to-battery-life.html?page=3">"Samsung Galaxy Book 2 tablet review: Performance takes a back seat to battery life"</a>. PCWorld. Retrieved 8 August 2019.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-5">^</a></b> <cite>Addison, Ken (19 April 2018). <a href="https://pcper.com/2018/04/the-ryzen-7-2700x-and-ryzen-5-2600x-review-zen-matures/2/#ftoc-heading-8">"The Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 5 2600X Review: Zen Matures"</a>. PC Perspective. Retrieved 8 August 2019.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-6">^</a></b> <cite>Cutress, Ian (5 November 2018). <a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/13526/intel-xeon-e-review-e2186g-and-more-tested/8">"Intel Xeon E Six-Core Review: E-2186G, E-2176G, E-2146G, and E-2136 Tested""</a>. AnandTech. Retrieved 8 August 2019.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-7">^</a></b> <cite>Jostedt, Erica (14 September 2010). <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2010/09/14/release-the-kraken-2/">"Release the Kraken"</a>. <i>The Mozilla Blog</i> (blog). Mozilla. Retrieved 8 August 2013.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-heath2015_8-0">^</a></b> <cite>Heath, Nick (21 May 2015). <a href="https://www.techrepublic.com/article/windows-10-and-edge-how-microsofts-new-browser-could-soon-challenge-chrome/">"Windows 10 and Edge: How Microsoft's new browser could soon challenge Chrome"</a>. <i>TechRepublic</i>. California, USA. Retrieved 21 May 2015.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-9">^</a></b> <cite>Muchmore, Michael (18 June 2008). <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080705125730/http://www.foxnews.com/story/0%2C2933%2C368182%2C00.html">"Review: Firefox 3 Stays Ahead of Browser Pack"</a>. <i><a href="/wiki/PC_Mag.">PC Mag.</a></i> Archived from <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,368182,00.html">the original</a> on 5 July 2008. Retrieved 6 September 2008 – via Fox News.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-10">^</a></b> <cite><a href="http://www.webkit.org/perf/sunspider/sunspider.html">"SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark"</a>. WebKit Open Source Project. Retrieved 15 February 2011.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-11">^</a></b> <cite><a href="/wiki/Maciej_Stachowiak">Stachowiak, Maciej</a> (18 December 2007). <a href="http://webkit.org/blog/152/announcing-sunspider-09/">"Announcing SunSpider 0.9"</a> (blog). WebKit Open Source Project. Retrieved 6 September 2008.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-12">^</a></b> <cite><a href="/wiki/Jeff_Atwood">Atwood, Jeff</a> (19 December 2007). <a href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001023.html">"The Great Browser JavaScript Showdown"</a>. <i>Coding Horror</i> (blog). Retrieved 6 September 2008.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-13">^</a></b> <cite><a href="/wiki/John_Resig">Resig, John</a> (3 September 2008). <a href="http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-performance-rundown/">"JavaScript Performance Rundown"</a>. <i>ejohn.org</i> (blog). Retrieved 21 May 2015.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-14">^</a></b> <cite><a href="/wiki/Maciej_Stachowiak">Stachowiak, Maciej</a> (7 April 2010). <a href="http://webkit.org/blog/1046/announcing-sunspider-0-9-1/">"Announcing SunSpider 0.9.1"</a>. <i>Surfin' Safari</i> (blog). WebKit Open Source Project. Retrieved 27 December 2010.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-15">^</a></b> <cite><a href="/wiki/Maciej_Stachowiak">Stachowiak, Maciej</a> (7 April 2010). <a href="http://www.webkit.org/blog/2364/announcing-sunspider-1-0/">"Announcing SunSpider 1.0"</a>. <i>Surfin’ Safari</i>. WebKit Open Source Project. Retrieved 29 April 2013.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-16">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://developers.google.com/octane/benchmark">"The Benchmark—Octane"</a>. <i>Google Developers</i>. 22 August 2012. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130929065452/https://developers.google.com/octane/benchmark">Archived</a> from the original on 29 September 2013. Retrieved 8 August 2013.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-17">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://developers.google.com/octane/benchmark">"The Benchmark—Octane"</a>. <i>Google Developers</i>. 6 November 2013. Retrieved 21 May 2015.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-18">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://v8project.blogspot.com/2017/04/retiring-octane.html">"Retiring Octane"</a>. <i>V8 JavaScript Engine</i>. 12 April 2017. Retrieved 24 August 2017.</cite>
</li>
</ol></div>
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 * (Top)
 * 1 General tests
 + 1.1 Speedometer 2.0
 + 1.2 Peacekeeper
 + 1.3 Speed-Battle
 + 1.4 Testdrive
 + 1.5 WebXPRT
 * 2 3D tests
 + 2.1 Wirple BMark
 * 3 Developer suites
 + 3.1 Mozilla benchmarks
 o 3.1.1 Dromaeo (superseded by Kraken)
 o 3.1.2 Kraken (active)
 + 3.2 Apple benchmarks
 o 3.2.1 JetStream (active)
 o 3.2.2 SunSpider (superseded)
 + 3.3 Google benchmarks
 o 3.3.1 V8 (superseded)
 o 3.3.2 Octane (unmaintained)
 + 3.4 GUIMark 2
 * 4 References
 Toggle the table of contents

 Browser speed test

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 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
 Find sources: "Browser speed test" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( March 2011 ) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) 
 

 A browser speed test is a computer benchmark that scores the performance of a web browser, by measuring the browser's efficiency in completing a predefined list of tasks. In general the testing software is available online, located on a website, where different algorithms are loaded and performed in the browser client. Typical test tasks are rendering and animation, DOM transformations, string operations, mathematical calculations, sorting algorithms, graphic performance tests and memory instructions. Browser speed tests have been used during browser wars to prove superiority of specific web browsers. The popular Acid3 test is no particular speed test but checks browser conformity to web standards (though it checks whether a general performance goal is met).

 General tests [ edit ]

 Speedometer 2.0 [ edit ]

 Speedometer was originally developed by the WebKit team at Apple and released in 2014 and was updated in 2018.[1] Speedometer 2.0 tests a browser's Web app responsiveness by timing simulated user interactions.

 This benchmark simulates user actions for adding, completing, and removing to-do items using multiple examples in TodoMVC. Each example in TodoMVC implements the same todo application using DOM APIs in different ways. Some call DOM APIs directly from ECMAScript 5 (ES5), ECMASCript 2015 (ES6), ES6 transpiled to ES5, and Elm transpiled to ES5. Others use one of eleven popular JavaScript frameworks: React, React with Redux, Ember.js, Backbone.js, AngularJS, (new) Angular, Vue.js, jQuery, Preact, Inferno, and Flight. Many of these frameworks are used on the most popular websites in the world, such as Facebook and Twitter. The performance of these types of operations depends on the speed of the DOM APIs, the JavaScript engine, CSS style resolution, layout, and other technologies.

 Peacekeeper [ edit ]

 Peacekeeper is a platform-independent benchmark by Futuremark that tests rendering, mathematical and memory operations. It takes approx. 5 minutes for execution and tells the results of other browsers with different CPUs. Futuremark stopped maintaining Peacekeeper in July 2015.[2] The test was taken offline in March 2018 and is no longer available.

 Speed-Battle [ edit ]

 Test of a JavaScript engine using simple algorithms. It displays results of other visitors (best, average, poorest) with the same operating system and browser version.[3] It has an additional statistics page with browser ranking.

 Testdrive [ edit ]

 Microsoft maintains a suite of performance-oriented tests, often designed to test and stress JavaScript and rendering performance. These tests are typically designed to highlight IE's performance[ citation needed ], but are compatible with other major browsers.

 WebXPRT [ edit ]

 WebXPRT is a cross-platform browser benchmark that runs HTML5- and JavaScript-based workloads.[4] The benchmark provides scores for six individual workloads, as well as an overall score.[5] WebXPRT is published by the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community, which is administered by Principled Technologies, and is one of the BenchmarkXPRT benchmarks. WebXPRT 3 is the most current version of WebXPRT.[6]

 3D tests [ edit ]

 Wirple BMark [ edit ]

 Performance test for HTML5 3D applications. It tests performance in both Canvas3D and WebGL.

 Developer suites [ edit ]

 This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( May 2015 ) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
 

 Mozilla benchmarks [ edit ]

 Dromaeo (superseded by Kraken ) [ edit ]

 A Mozilla test suite based on SunSpider tests. It takes several minutes for execution and displays very detailed information about every single test task.

 Kraken (active) [ edit ]

 Another JavaScript test suite from Mozilla, released September 14, 2010.[7]

 Apple benchmarks [ edit ]

 JetStream (active) [ edit ]

 A JavaScript test suite developed by Apple.[8]

 SunSpider (superseded) [ edit ]

 SunSpider is a benchmark created by the webkit team that aims to measure JavaScript performance on tasks relevant to the current and near future use of JavaScript in the real world, such as encryption and text manipulation.[9] The suite further attempts to be balanced and statistically sound.[10]

 Version 0.9 was released by the WebKit team in December 2007.[11] It was well-received,[12] and other browser developers also use it to compare the JavaScript performance of different browsers.[13]

 Version 0.9.1 was released in April 2010.[14]

 Version 1.0 was released in April 2013.[15]

 Google benchmarks [ edit ]

 V8 (superseded) [ edit ]

 A JavaScript test suite by Google, used to optimize the Google Chrome web browser. It does not test rendering performance. It was superseded by Google's Octane benchmark.

 Octane (unmaintained) [ edit ]

 Google's JavaScript test suite which replaces the V8 benchmark. According to Google, "Octane v.1 consists of 13 tests, 5 new ones and 8 from the original V8 Benchmark Suite."[16] Octane v.2 supplanted v.1, consisting of "17 tests, four more than Octane v1."[17]

 As of April 12 2017, Google no longer maintains Octane.[18]


 GUIMark 2 [ edit ]

 This tests vector, bitmap, and text rendering for both Adobe Flash and HTML5.

 References [ edit ]

 1. ^ "Speedometer 2.0: A Benchmark for Modern Web App Responsiveness". 15 January 2018.
 2. ^ Brinkmann, Martin (23 July 2015). "Futuremark ends support for Peacekeeper benchmark". Ghacks . Retrieved 7 February 2017 .
 3. ^ "Google Ranking Factor | Mobile Site Speed | News | eJIGSAW®". eJIGSAW®. 2018-03-19 . Retrieved 2018-03-21 . [ permanent dead link ]
 4. ^ Hachmann, Mark (28 November 2018). "Samsung Galaxy Book 2 tablet review: Performance takes a back seat to battery life". PCWorld . Retrieved 8 August 2019 .
 5. ^ Addison, Ken (19 April 2018). "The Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 5 2600X Review: Zen Matures". PC Perspective . Retrieved 8 August 2019 .
 6. ^ Cutress, Ian (5 November 2018). "Intel Xeon E Six-Core Review: E-2186G, E-2176G, E-2146G, and E-2136 Tested"". AnandTech . Retrieved 8 August 2019 .
 7. ^ Jostedt, Erica (14 September 2010). "Release the Kraken". The Mozilla Blog (blog). Mozilla . Retrieved 8 August 2013 .
 8. ^ Heath, Nick (21 May 2015). "Windows 10 and Edge: How Microsoft's new browser could soon challenge Chrome". TechRepublic. California, USA . Retrieved 21 May 2015 .
 9. ^ Muchmore, Michael (18 June 2008). "Review: Firefox 3 Stays Ahead of Browser Pack". PC Mag. Archived from the original on 5 July 2008 . Retrieved 6 September 2008 – via Fox News.
 10. ^ "SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark". WebKit Open Source Project . Retrieved 15 February 2011 .
 11. ^ Stachowiak, Maciej (18 December 2007). "Announcing SunSpider 0.9" (blog). WebKit Open Source Project . Retrieved 6 September 2008 .
 12. ^ Atwood, Jeff (19 December 2007). "The Great Browser JavaScript Showdown". Coding Horror (blog) . Retrieved 6 September 2008 .
 13. ^ Resig, John (3 September 2008). "JavaScript Performance Rundown". ejohn.org (blog) . Retrieved 21 May 2015 .
 14. ^ Stachowiak, Maciej (7 April 2010). "Announcing SunSpider 0.9.1". Surfin' Safari (blog). WebKit Open Source Project . Retrieved 27 December 2010 .
 15. ^ Stachowiak, Maciej (7 April 2010). "Announcing SunSpider 1.0". Surfin’ Safari. WebKit Open Source Project . Retrieved 29 April 2013 .
 16. ^ "The Benchmark—Octane". Google Developers. 22 August 2012. Archived from the original on 29 September 2013 . Retrieved 8 August 2013 .
 17. ^ "The Benchmark—Octane". Google Developers. 6 November 2013 . Retrieved 21 May 2015 .
 18. ^ "Retiring Octane". V8 JavaScript Engine. 12 April 2017 . Retrieved 24 August 2017 .
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
	 
A browser speed test is a computer benchmark that scores the performance of a web browser, by measuring the browser's efficiency in completing a predefined list of tasks. In general the testing software is available online, located on a website, where different algorithms are loaded and performed in the browser client. Typical test tasks are rendering and animation, DOM transformations, string operations, mathematical calculations, sorting algorithms, graphic performance tests and memory instructions.
Browser speed tests have been used during browser wars to prove superiority of specific web browsers. The popular Acid3 test is no particular speed test but checks browser conformity to web standards (though it checks whether a general performance goal is met).
General tests[edit]
Speedometer 2.0[edit]
Speedometer was originally developed by the WebKit team at Apple and released in 2014 and was updated in 2018. [1]  Speedometer 2.0 tests a browser's Web app responsiveness by timing simulated user interactions.
 This benchmark simulates user actions for adding, completing, and removing to-do items using multiple examples in TodoMVC. Each example in TodoMVC implements the same todo application using DOM APIs in different ways. Some call DOM APIs directly from ECMAScript 5 (ES5), ECMASCript 2015 (ES6), ES6 transpiled to ES5, and Elm transpiled to ES5. Others use one of eleven popular JavaScript frameworks: React, React with Redux, Ember.js, Backbone.js, AngularJS, (new) Angular, Vue.js, jQuery, Preact, Inferno, and Flight. Many of these frameworks are used on the most popular websites in the world, such as Facebook and Twitter. The performance of these types of operations depends on the speed of the DOM APIs, the JavaScript engine, CSS style resolution, layout, and other technologies.
Peacekeeper[edit]
Peacekeeper is a platform-independent benchmark by Futuremark that tests rendering, mathematical and memory operations. It takes approx. 5 minutes for execution and tells the results of other browsers with different CPUs. Futuremark stopped maintaining Peacekeeper in July 2015. [2]  The test was taken offline in March 2018 and is no longer available.
 Speed-Battle[edit]
Test of a JavaScript engine using simple algorithms. It displays results of other visitors (best, average, poorest) with the same operating system and browser version. [3]  It has an additional statistics page with browser ranking.
Testdrive[edit]
Microsoft maintains a suite of performance-oriented tests, often designed to test and stress JavaScript and rendering performance. These tests are typically designed to highlight IE's performance[ citation needed ], but are compatible with other major browsers.
WebXPRT[edit]
 WebXPRT is a cross-platform browser benchmark that runs HTML5- and JavaScript-based workloads. [4]  The benchmark provides scores for six individual workloads, as well as an overall score. [5]  WebXPRT is published by the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community, which is administered by Principled Technologies, and is one of the BenchmarkXPRT benchmarks. WebXPRT 3 is the most current version of WebXPRT. [6] 
3D tests[edit]
Wirple BMark[edit]
Performance test for HTML5 3D applications. It tests performance in both Canvas3D and WebGL.
Developer suites[edit]
Mozilla benchmarks[edit]
Dromaeo (superseded by Kraken)[edit]
A Mozilla test suite based on SunSpider tests. It takes several minutes for execution and displays very detailed information about every single test task.
 Kraken (active)[edit]
Another JavaScript test suite from Mozilla, released September 14, 2010. [7] 
Apple benchmarks[edit]
 JetStream (active)[edit]
A JavaScript test suite developed by Apple. [8] 
SunSpider (superseded)[edit]
SunSpider is a benchmark created by the webkit team that aims to measure JavaScript performance on tasks relevant to the current and near future use of JavaScript in the real world, such as encryption and text manipulation. [9]  The suite further attempts to be balanced and statistically sound. [10] 
 Version 0.9 was released by the WebKit team in December 2007. [11]  It was well-received, [12]  and other browser developers also use it to compare the JavaScript performance of different browsers. [13] 
 Version 0.9.1 was released in April 2010. [14] 
 Version 1.0 was released in April 2013. [15] 
Google benchmarks[edit]
V8 (superseded)[edit]
A JavaScript test suite by Google, used to optimize the Google Chrome web browser. It does not test rendering performance. It was superseded by Google's Octane benchmark.
Octane (unmaintained)[edit]
Google's JavaScript test suite which replaces the V8 benchmark. According to Google, "Octane v.1 consists of 13 tests, 5 new ones and 8 from the original V8 Benchmark Suite." [16]  Octane v.2 supplanted v.1, consisting of "17 tests, four more than Octane v1." [17] 
 As of April 12 2017, Google no longer maintains Octane. [18] 
GUIMark 2[edit]
This tests vector, bitmap, and text rendering for both Adobe Flash and HTML5.
References[edit]
  ^   "Speedometer 2.0: A Benchmark for Modern Web App Responsiveness". 15 January 2018.
  ^  Brinkmann, Martin (23 July 2015). "Futuremark ends support for Peacekeeper benchmark". Ghacks. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  ^   "Google Ranking Factor | Mobile Site Speed | News | eJIGSAW®". eJIGSAW®. 2018-03-19. Retrieved 2018-03-21. [ permanent dead link ]
  ^  Hachmann, Mark (28 November 2018). "Samsung Galaxy Book 2 tablet review: Performance takes a back seat to battery life". PCWorld. Retrieved 8 August 2019.
  ^  Addison, Ken (19 April 2018). "The Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 5 2600X Review: Zen Matures". PC Perspective. Retrieved 8 August 2019.
  ^  Cutress, Ian (5 November 2018). "Intel Xeon E Six-Core Review: E-2186G, E-2176G, E-2146G, and E-2136 Tested"". AnandTech. Retrieved 8 August 2019.
  ^  Jostedt, Erica (14 September 2010). "Release the Kraken". The Mozilla Blog (blog). Mozilla. Retrieved 8 August 2013.
  ^  Heath, Nick (21 May 2015). "Windows 10 and Edge: How Microsoft's new browser could soon challenge Chrome". TechRepublic. California, USA. Retrieved 21 May 2015.
  ^  Muchmore, Michael (18 June 2008). "Review: Firefox 3 Stays Ahead of Browser Pack".  PC Mag.  Archived from the original on 5 July 2008. Retrieved 6 September 2008 – via Fox News.
  ^   "SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark". WebKit Open Source Project. Retrieved 15 February 2011.
  ^   Stachowiak, Maciej (18 December 2007). "Announcing SunSpider 0.9" (blog). WebKit Open Source Project. Retrieved 6 September 2008.
  ^   Atwood, Jeff (19 December 2007). "The Great Browser JavaScript Showdown". Coding Horror (blog). Retrieved 6 September 2008.
  ^   Resig, John (3 September 2008). "JavaScript Performance Rundown". ejohn.org (blog). Retrieved 21 May 2015.
  ^   Stachowiak, Maciej (7 April 2010). "Announcing SunSpider 0.9.1". Surfin' Safari (blog). WebKit Open Source Project. Retrieved 27 December 2010.
  ^   Stachowiak, Maciej (7 April 2010). "Announcing SunSpider 1.0". Surfin’ Safari. WebKit Open Source Project. Retrieved 29 April 2013.
  ^   "The Benchmark—Octane". Google Developers. 22 August 2012. Archived from the original on 29 September 2013. Retrieved 8 August 2013.
  ^   "The Benchmark—Octane". Google Developers. 6 November 2013. Retrieved 21 May 2015.
  ^   "Retiring Octane". V8 JavaScript Engine. 12 April 2017. Retrieved 24 August 2017.
Browser speed test - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_speed_test
https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/03/07/chrome-beats-safari-in-apples-speedometer-browser-test
Chrome beats Safari in Apple's Speedometer browser test | AppleInsider
2022-03-07
Malcolm Owen
<div><div>
 <p>
 <a href="https://photos5.appleinsider.com/gallery/47333-92283-46650-90933-000-lead-Chrome-xl-xl.jpg">
 
 </a>
 </p>
 
 
 
 <p>
 <em>
 AppleInsider may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made through links on our site.
 </em>
 </p> <p>Google Chrome has become the fastest web browser on Mac, with it managing to outpace <a href="https://appleinsider.com/inside/safari">Safari</a> in Apple's Speedometer browser responsiveness tests. 
</p><p>Over the years, improvements have been made to Chrome to make it work better and faster in macOS. The developers of Chromium, the basis of Google Chrome, now say that its browser is now running better than Apple's Safari in terms of speed. 
</p><p>In a <a href="https://blog.chromium.org/search/label/the%20fast%20and%20the%20curious">blog post</a> on Monday, the team claims that M99, Chrome on Mac, has achieved a score of 300 in Apple's <a href="https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.0/">Speedometer</a> browser responsiveness benchmark. The score is reportedly the highest of any browser to have taken the test to date. 
</p><p>To achieve the score, the team expanded on other earlier performance improvements by enabling ThinLTO, a build optimization technique that "inlines speed-critical parts of the code base, even when they span multiple files or libraries," the post states. 
</p><p>By enabling ThinLTO, Chrome's speed bump made it faster than current Safari builds by 7%. When it is added to other recent graphics optimizations, the team's tests push Chrome's lead to 15% faster than Safari. 
</p><p>Other recent improvements include the V8 Sparkplug JavaScript compiler, which generates code with a low compilation overhead. By also using short builtin calls that optimize the placement of code in memory, the result is a boost to performance by "avoiding indirect jumps when calling functions."
</p><p>The test was conducted on Speedometer 2.0, running on a <a href="https://appleinsider.com/inside/14-inch-macbook-pro">14-inch MacBook Pro</a> with an M1 Max, 32 GPU cores, and 64GB of memory, while connected to power. 
</p><p>"Overall, since launching Chrome on M1-based Macs in late 2020, Chrome is now 43% faster than it was just 17 months ago!" claims the team. 
</p><p>Benchmarks are only one way to ascertain the fastest browser, but Chrome engineering senior director Max Christoff also insists "what matters most is that Chrome is actually faster and more efficient in everyday usage." Christoff promises the team will invest more on "innovative performance improvements" for the browser. 
</p><p>In previous major updates, March 2021 had assurances that work was being done to reduce the <a href="https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/03/12/google-is-trying-to-make-chrome-less-of-a-resource-hog">resource usage</a> of Chrome on macOS. In August, a beta of Chrome included a change to <a href="https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/08/31/chrome-94-beta-improves-graphical-processing-by-using-metal">graphical processing</a> that leverages Metal. </p>
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 Contact Us | Privacy Policy

 Chrome beats Safari in Apple's Speedometer browser test

 Malcolm Owen | Mar 07, 2022
 13 Comments
 Facebook
 Twitter
 Reddit

 AppleInsider may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made through links on our site.

 Google Chrome has become the fastest web browser on Mac, with it managing to outpace Safari in Apple's Speedometer browser responsiveness tests.

 Over the years, improvements have been made to Chrome to make it work better and faster in macOS. The developers of Chromium, the basis of Google Chrome, now say that its browser is now running better than Apple's Safari in terms of speed.

 In a blog post on Monday, the team claims that M99, Chrome on Mac, has achieved a score of 300 in Apple's Speedometer browser responsiveness benchmark. The score is reportedly the highest of any browser to have taken the test to date.

 To achieve the score, the team expanded on other earlier performance improvements by enabling ThinLTO, a build optimization technique that "inlines speed-critical parts of the code base, even when they span multiple files or libraries," the post states.

 By enabling ThinLTO, Chrome's speed bump made it faster than current Safari builds by 7%. When it is added to other recent graphics optimizations, the team's tests push Chrome's lead to 15% faster than Safari.

 Other recent improvements include the V8 Sparkplug JavaScript compiler, which generates code with a low compilation overhead. By also using short builtin calls that optimize the placement of code in memory, the result is a boost to performance by "avoiding indirect jumps when calling functions."

 The test was conducted on Speedometer 2.0, running on a 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M1 Max, 32 GPU cores, and 64GB of memory, while connected to power.

 "Overall, since launching Chrome on M1-based Macs in late 2020, Chrome is now 43% faster than it was just 17 months ago!" claims the team.

 Benchmarks are only one way to ascertain the fastest browser, but Chrome engineering senior director Max Christoff also insists "what matters most is that Chrome is actually faster and more efficient in everyday usage." Christoff promises the team will invest more on "innovative performance improvements" for the browser.

 In previous major updates, March 2021 had assurances that work was being done to reduce the resource usage of Chrome on macOS. In August, a beta of Chrome included a change to graphical processing that leverages Metal.

 13 Comments

 💬 13 Comments

 bonobob said about 11 months ago

 The better performance is not sufficient to mitigate the privacy issues.

 mykem said about 11 months ago

 Anything can be faster if it gobbles up inordinate amount of resources. Safari on the other fast yet still efficient in its use of resources.

 Flytrap said about 11 months ago

 mykem said:
 Anything can be faster if it gobbles up inordinate amount of resources. Safari on the other fast yet still efficient in its use of resources.

 Agreed... a super fast browser that keeps the fans whirling at full speed and cuts the battery life significantly is not something I am excited about, unless I am working on something computationally intensive and know that I will be tethered to a mains power source for the duration of that process.

 viclauyyc said about 11 months ago

 I don’t care, still will not use it. Privacy is more important than a few million seconds.

 tjwolf said about 11 months ago

 As others have already pointed out, raw performance isn't all that important. What good is a browser that blows away the competition in CPU benchmark, when it bogs down your system as you open more browser tabs because it's a memory hog? And that's not even considering privacy.

 I use Safari almost exclusively. Only two cases where I resort to Chrome: on the work side when testing my applications for cross-browser compatibility and on the private side, when I need to go to a foreign-language web site. Safari is nowhere near as good as Chrome in auto-translating web sites to English. Especially since Safari only supports a handful of languages :-(

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  Google Chrome has become the fastest web browser on Mac, with it managing to outpace Safari in Apple's Speedometer browser responsiveness tests. 
 Over the years, improvements have been made to Chrome to make it work better and faster in macOS. The developers of Chromium, the basis of Google Chrome, now say that its browser is now running better than Apple's Safari in terms of speed. 
 In a blog post on Monday, the team claims that M99, Chrome on Mac, has achieved a score of 300 in Apple's Speedometer browser responsiveness benchmark. The score is reportedly the highest of any browser to have taken the test to date. 
 To achieve the score, the team expanded on other earlier performance improvements by enabling ThinLTO, a build optimization technique that "inlines speed-critical parts of the code base, even when they span multiple files or libraries," the post states. 
 By enabling ThinLTO, Chrome's speed bump made it faster than current Safari builds by 7%. When it is added to other recent graphics optimizations, the team's tests push Chrome's lead to 15% faster than Safari. 
 Other recent improvements include the V8 Sparkplug JavaScript compiler, which generates code with a low compilation overhead. By also using short builtin calls that optimize the placement of code in memory, the result is a boost to performance by "avoiding indirect jumps when calling functions."
 The test was conducted on Speedometer 2.0, running on a 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M1 Max, 32 GPU cores, and 64GB of memory, while connected to power. 
 "Overall, since launching Chrome on M1-based Macs in late 2020, Chrome is now 43% faster than it was just 17 months ago!" claims the team. 
 Benchmarks are only one way to ascertain the fastest browser, but Chrome engineering senior director Max Christoff also insists "what matters most is that Chrome is actually faster and more efficient in everyday usage." Christoff promises the team will invest more on "innovative performance improvements" for the browser. 
 In previous major updates, March 2021 had assurances that work was being done to reduce the resource usage of Chrome on macOS. In August, a beta of Chrome included a change to graphical processing that leverages Metal.
Chrome beats Safari in Apple's Speedometer browser test | AppleInsider
https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/03/07/chrome-beats-safari-in-apples-speedometer-browser-test
https://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/test-browser-speed
Test speed of web browsers to find the fastest
2023-01-01
None
<div><div>
<p>Are you using the fastest web browser? There are several speed tests available online to check how quick your web browser is. But before we get into that, let me jump right to the end – <a href="//www.webdevelopersnotes.com/fastest-web-browser">Google Chrome is the fastest web browser</a>. A lot has been said and written about the speeds of various popular web browsers and Chrome has consistently appeared at the top.</p>
<p>Obviously, no test is objective – the developer, try as hard as they want, can bring in their personal bias. Anyway, all of the tests detailed on this page will be able to assess your chosen web browser.</p>
<div>
<h4>Sponsored Links</h4>
</div>
<h2>The visual test – navigating the 3D JavaScript world</h2>
<p>I love this simple speed test and you can quickly see the difference if you have multiple browsers installed on your system (you should if you consider yourself a web developer). Go to <a href="//www.benjoffe.com/code/demos/canvascape/textures"> Canvascape – “Experimenting With Textures”</a> developed by Ben Joffe. Change the resolution to <em>High</em> (click on the “Apply” button) and visually compare how fast the web browsers display the textured 3D world (inspired by Wolfenstein).</p>
<h2>JavaScript test from Celtickane.com</h2>
<p>A famous web browser speed test to determine how fast the JavaScript engine runs in the program. They have results too on the page but somehow I find Firefox a little out of place when it’s above Chrome. The 3D texture speed test (above) clearly shows that Firefox is way slower. Check out the <a href="//celtickane.com/labs/web-browser-javascript-benchmark">web browser JavaScript benchmark</a>.</p>
<h2>Cold and warm starts test</h2>
<p>EvilScience has some numbers and you can quickly perform these tests on your own. A cold start is when you open a web browser for the first time. A warm start is closing the browser window and restating the program. Take a look at the thorough speed comparison of popular web browsers – Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Safari – performed on <a href="//www.evilscience.org/internet-explorer-vs-firefox-vs-opera-vs-chrome-vs-safari">EvilScience</a>. Though Opera is his favourite browser, Google Chrome takes the winner’s place in his test.</p>
<h2>CSS rendering test</h2>
<p>The <a href="//www.howtocreate.co.uk/csstest.html">CSS rendering test</a> from howtocreate.co.uk is a great way to check how fast browsers display CSS. You need to save this web page on your computer and access it again from the browser to do away with the download speed and progressive rendering issue.</p>
<h2>The Acid tests</h2>
<p>EvilScience compares web browser across different variable, not necessarily speed. The <a href="//www.webstandards.org/action/acid2">Acid2 browser test</a> and <a href="//acid3.acidtests.org">Acid3</a> are more of compliance and web standards checks.</p>
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 Home / Web Browsers / Test speed of web browsers to find the fastest

 Test speed of web browsers to find the fastest

 Are you using the fastest web browser? There are several speed tests available online to check how quick your web browser is. But before we get into that, let me jump right to the end – Google Chrome is the fastest web browser. A lot has been said and written about the speeds of various popular web browsers and Chrome has consistently appeared at the top.

 Obviously, no test is objective – the developer, try as hard as they want, can bring in their personal bias. Anyway, all of the tests detailed on this page will be able to assess your chosen web browser.

 Sponsored Links

 The visual test – navigating the 3D JavaScript world

 I love this simple speed test and you can quickly see the difference if you have multiple browsers installed on your system (you should if you consider yourself a web developer). Go to Canvascape – “Experimenting With Textures” developed by Ben Joffe. Change the resolution to High (click on the “Apply” button) and visually compare how fast the web browsers display the textured 3D world (inspired by Wolfenstein).

 JavaScript test from Celtickane.com

 A famous web browser speed test to determine how fast the JavaScript engine runs in the program. They have results too on the page but somehow I find Firefox a little out of place when it’s above Chrome. The 3D texture speed test (above) clearly shows that Firefox is way slower. Check out the web browser JavaScript benchmark.

 Cold and warm starts test

 EvilScience has some numbers and you can quickly perform these tests on your own. A cold start is when you open a web browser for the first time. A warm start is closing the browser window and restating the program. Take a look at the thorough speed comparison of popular web browsers – Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Safari – performed on EvilScience. Though Opera is his favourite browser, Google Chrome takes the winner’s place in his test.

 CSS rendering test

 The CSS rendering test from howtocreate.co.uk is a great way to check how fast browsers display CSS. You need to save this web page on your computer and access it again from the browser to do away with the download speed and progressive rendering issue.

 The Acid tests

 EvilScience compares web browser across different variable, not necessarily speed. The Acid2 browser test and Acid3 are more of compliance and web standards checks.

 Sponsored Links

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 X
Are you using the fastest web browser? There are several speed tests available online to check how quick your web browser is. But before we get into that, let me jump right to the end – Google Chrome is the fastest web browser. A lot has been said and written about the speeds of various popular web browsers and Chrome has consistently appeared at the top.
Obviously, no test is objective – the developer, try as hard as they want, can bring in their personal bias. Anyway, all of the tests detailed on this page will be able to assess your chosen web browser.
Sponsored Links
The visual test – navigating the 3D JavaScript world
I love this simple speed test and you can quickly see the difference if you have multiple browsers installed on your system (you should if you consider yourself a web developer). Go to  Canvascape – “Experimenting With Textures” developed by Ben Joffe. Change the resolution to High (click on the “Apply” button) and visually compare how fast the web browsers display the textured 3D world (inspired by Wolfenstein).
JavaScript test from Celtickane.com
A famous web browser speed test to determine how fast the JavaScript engine runs in the program. They have results too on the page but somehow I find Firefox a little out of place when it’s above Chrome. The 3D texture speed test (above) clearly shows that Firefox is way slower. Check out the web browser JavaScript benchmark.
Cold and warm starts test
EvilScience has some numbers and you can quickly perform these tests on your own. A cold start is when you open a web browser for the first time. A warm start is closing the browser window and restating the program. Take a look at the thorough speed comparison of popular web browsers – Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Safari – performed on EvilScience. Though Opera is his favourite browser, Google Chrome takes the winner’s place in his test.
CSS rendering test
The CSS rendering test from howtocreate.co.uk is a great way to check how fast browsers display CSS. You need to save this web page on your computer and access it again from the browser to do away with the download speed and progressive rendering issue.
The Acid tests
EvilScience compares web browser across different variable, not necessarily speed. The Acid2 browser test and Acid3 are more of compliance and web standards checks.
Test speed of web browsers to find the fastest
https://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/test-browser-speed
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html
Browser speed comparisons
None
None
<div>
<p><a href="#testresults">Skip to results</a>.</p>
<h2>A polite request</h2>
<p>Please stop posting this article on sites like Slashdot, Digg, newspapers, etc. It is old news. This article is around
2 years old now (although it has been kept up to date), and has been retired - posting it simply shows how long it took you to find it. It has
already been posted on Slashdot enough times, Digg more than enough times, similar sites more times than I can count, as
well as newspaper sites all around the world, and far more blogs than I will ever be able to read.</p>
<p>I thank you for your attention, and I am very happy that you found this article interesting or useful enough to read.
However, it really does not need you to post it yet again - all you will do is eat my
bandwidth, and I ask you not to do that.</p>
<p>NYTimes, you may wish to note that this is a site where I publish research articles, tutorials, and scripts.
It is <a href="http://mama.indstate.edu/users/bones/WhyIHateWebLogs.html">not a blog</a> (language warning).</p>
<h2>What is this about</h2>
<p>There is a speed war on the web. Browsers compete on many fronts; security, standards support, features and speed. Most
people are aware of which major browser fails on three of these, but one of them is still open for grabs. Speed.</p>
<p>Many organisations and users try to claim that their browser is the fastest.
The Opera site claims that Opera is <q>The Fastest Browser on Earth!</q>.
The Mozilla site claims that <q>Firefox 1.0 empowers you to browse faster</q>
(faster than what?). Mozilla itself is quoted as being <q>an alternative
to Microsoft IE and it's faster to boot</q>. Apple's Safari pages claim that <q>Safari
loads pages more quickly than any other Mac web browser</q> (although they failed to show any results for Opera, and their
charts fail to show results for pages that contain images). Internet Explorer users often claim that they use it because of
its speed, as the alternatives take longer to start and load pages.</p>
<p>Opera and Firefox users are quite vocal on the subject,
but none of them can actually show any research to back up their statements, ususally just saying "X takes <em>way</em>
longer than Y to start" or "my friend uses X and it is much slower on his computer than Y is on mine". Those
that did try more than one usually say "X just felt faster than Y when I tried them" (although this may refer to
familiarity with the individual user interface - something that I do not cover here). I have even heard people comparing
Firefox and Opera, then realised they were referring to Opera 6 (even though historically, Opera 6 is about equivalent to
Netscape 4), something that was replaced with a completely new engine long before Firefox even existed.</p>
<p>Well, I've had enough of these unfounded arguments. I present my research. This is an honest, unbiased view (or as unbiased as I
can be). Unlike most people, I not only test all the browsers, I test them all on the same computer as each other - grouped
into Linux, Mac and Windows (using the same or equivalent hardware for each). This, I hope, gives an accurate comparison, not
only of the browsers compared with each other, but for those that work on multiple platforms, it also gives a fairly
accurate comparison of the different optimisations for each platform.</p>
<p>And please, those of you whose browsers did not perform as well as you had hoped, just accept it. Stop
with the comments saying this article is biased. It does not matter what I use or you use. This article is not biased. The fastest
browsers are the fastest browsers. I appreciate browsers for the sake of them being browsers. I feel no need to tailor tests or
alter results to make a browser appear better or worse than it actually is.</p>
<h2>The tests</h2>
<p>In order to test each browser's speed response, I put them through a number of tests. Each test has a careful set of rules
to make sure that I give unbiased results. Each set of tests are grouped by platform, and for each platform, I use just one
computer to ensure that the tests compare just the browsers, and not the hardware or software they run on. Each test is done
with a default browser install, without tweaking any settings (I know that many browsers perform slightly better if you
tweak their network settings, but this is intended to be a test of a standard browser install - some people also suggest that
using a native skin makes a browser faster, but I got virtually identical results with native and non-native skins). With
Browsers that also offer email or news features, I enabled these clients, but did not have any email or news items in them
(some of them may perform differently if they did, but that is not what I was trying to test).</p>
<p>The idea was to find out the fastest browser(s) at performing the major tasks that browser engines are expected to perform.
The basic requirements were HTML, CSS, JavaScript, basic DHTML and images - if the browser engine was not capable of performing
these tasks then I am not interested and it was not tested.</p>
<p>The tests are not perfect. Obviously nothing can be perfect. But they do give a very good idea of how each browser would
cope in each type of situation. Importantly, the tests were not (intentially) tailored towards the strengths or weaknesses of
any particular browser.</p>
<dl>
	<dt>Cold start</dt>
	<dd>This is the time it takes to do a cold load. I log out then in, and then once all background processes have completed,
	I run the browser as the first program. I use the default settings for the browser, without preloading or quicklaunch
	tools (unless the browser installs itself this way, as with Internet Explorer on Windows). The browsers are all set to
	show a single page on startup, and this page is a locally stored basic HTML page.</dd>
	<dt>Warm start</dt>
	<dd>After completing a cold start, I close the browser, then time how long it takes to start again. I restart it again
	another two times, and take an average.</dd>
	<dt>Rendering CSS</dt>
	<dd>To test CSS rendering speed I use a <a href="csstest.html">CSS benchmark test</a> devised by <a href="http://nontroppo.org/wiki/Opera7">nontroppo</a>.
	The test measures the time it takes the browser to render a page consisting of almost 2500 positioned DIVs. The page is
	stored locally, loaded once to pre-load it, then reloaded 3 times, and the average time taken for those three renderings.
	The page is the first page loaded after starting the browser (after logging out and in). All browsers took significantly
	longer during the initial load, which is why I discount this initial load, as it does not reflect the reality of normal
	rendering.</dd>
	<dt>Rendering table</dt>
	<dd>To test table rendering speed I load a local copy of my <a href="jslibs/oldindex.php">javascript libraries page</a>. I ignore
	this first load and then go back and click the link again (ensuring the page and all associated files are cached).
	I then use a script to time how long it takes to render the page. I take the average of three loads.</dd>
	<dt>Script speed</dt>
	<dd>To test scripting speed I use the fantastic <a href="http://www.24fun.com/downloadcenter/benchjs/benchjs.html">benchmarking
	tool at 24fun.com</a>. This is intended for testing multiple browsers on one computer to see how well they perform
	compared with each other. Small variations in hardware or software can cause big differences in results so it is important
	that all tests are done on the same computer. After logging out and logging in, I load a browser, clear its cache, enable
	popups (a requirement of the tests), and then run the tests. The tool tests a good variety of different things, including mathematical calculations,
	DHTML, string manipulation, image swapping, table manipulation, page content manipulation and window management. With most browsers I test twice and
	take an average but I did not do that with iCab because it took half an hour the first time, and required me to sit there
	and babysit it, repeatedly telling it that the script was not an infinite loop, it was just a horrendously slow browser!</dd>
	<dt>Multiple images</dt>
	<dd>This is done to reflect normal web site handling. I make the browser load a page containing several small images.
	This requires multiple server connections (or keepalive) and is a good test to see how well the browser manages its
	network connections, as well as how well it can cope with rendering multiple images simultaneously. After logging out
	and logging in, I load a browser, clear its cache, then I use Google image search to
	<a href="http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=solid&amp;hl=en&amp;btnG=Google+Search">search for the word
	'solid'</a>. This ensures that any referenced pages are pre-cached, and any required DNS lookups are completed, to
	minimise the effects of DNS delays. Then I load use Google image search to search for three more words (pine, red, stone
	- don't blame me for the results that come up, I wasn't expecting them either), and I use the average load time of these
	three pages. (The timer starts when I hit 'search', and stops when all images have completed loading.) My connection
	speed is 100 Mbps and has no discernable effect on the results. I have also tested it on a 700 Kbps connection and got
	similar results. Google search time is typically below 0.03 seconds.</dd>
	<dt>History</dt>
	<dd>Something that is commonly overlooked when checking browser speed, but is very important to overall browsing speed.
	I use Google image search to <a href="http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=pine&amp;hl=en&amp;btnG=Google+Search">search
	for pine</a>, and I navigate through the result pages 1 to 25. I then start the timer, and go back as quickly as possible
	to the first result page, then forward as quickly as possible to page 25 again. Each intermediate page must be allowed
	to load completely - including images - before moving to the next page. (This means that any indicators that the browser
	provides to show that the page is loading must show the page as loaded before navigating to the next page). I use the
	fastest means the browser has to navigate, which typically means using keyboard shortcuts. This test demonstrates how
	efficiently the browser uses caching in order to improve browsing speed.</dd>
</dl>
<p>Note: I did not test plugins like Java or Flash, as these are external programs, and not the browsers themselves. They are
affected much more significantly by their own version numbers or memory contraints of the Operating Syetem, and are not
really in the browser's own control.</p>
<h2>Test results</h2>
<p>Sorted alphabetically:</p>
<ul>
	<li><a href="#linspeed">Linux browsers</a></li>
	<li><a href="#macspeed">Mac browsers</a></li>
	<li><a href="#winspeed">Windows browsers</a></li>
	<li>(<a href="#supplementary">Supplementary browsers</a>)</li>
</ul>
<p>Test results are shown by default in tabular form. If your browser's scripting engine is up to the task, you can click on
the column headings to sort the table by that heading. The fastest browser is marked in each test using light green, or
salmon if it was the fastest, but made mistakes trying to obtain that speed. Some results also have more information, that
will appear in a tooltip when you hold your mouse over the result. These can be identified in good browsers (I have done an
ugly DHTML behaviour to make this happen in Internet Explorer as well - this excuse-for-a-browser is really annoying me) by the
Help
cursor that the mouse should use while you hold it over those results, and by the » character.</p>
<h3>Linux browsers</h3>
<p>The tests are done on SuSE Linux 9.1, using KDE (except Epiphany, whose results are shown for Gnome, as that is its
normal operating environment). I also tested the browsers on Gnome, but only got significantly
different results in Konqueror, so that is the only browser's result I will show for both Gnome and KDE. I only concentrate on the main Gecko based browsers - there are many
variants available. Mozilla (SeaMonkey), Firefox and Epiphany are the ones I will test, as these are either the official
releases from Mozilla.org, or the official browser of the Gnome DTE. I could not test Galeon (one of the most popular Gnome
browsers) as it was not available for the Mozilla version I had installed. However, since it is just a fancy skin for Mozilla (like Epiphany),
it's times are likely to be similar to Mozilla's.
Opera 8 tests were done using Opera 8 beta 1. Mozilla 1.8 tests were done using Mozilla 1.8 alpha 6. Firefox 1.5 tests were done using Firefox 1.5 beta 2. Opera 9 tests were done using Opera 9 technical preview 1.</p>
<p>NOTE: I have updated the page after discovering that I had done the multiple image test with Opera 8 on Linux
set to 'ID as Opera' (not the default setting). This is important because <a href="http://groups-beta.google.com/group/google.public.support.general/browse_thread/thread/2218b3948e5ee27e">Google uses the wrong HTTP header</a> to check
if the browser can handle a gzip compressed page, which Opera can. Instead of checking the Accept-Encoding header,
which correctly says this, they check the User-Agent, and only use gzip if the browser claims to be Mozilla or
MSIE (other browsers like Safari and Konqueror are also included in this). Setting Opera to use 'ID as MSIE'
(default setting) or 'ID as Mozilla 5.0' makes Google send it the compressed version as well. This makes a huge
difference, from Opera appearing to be almost the slowest at 2.50 seconds, to being clearly the fastest at 1.82
seconds.</p>
<p>Hardware; 800 MHz Intel Pentium 3, 256 MB RAM.</p>
<table>
	<caption>Linux speed chart - times are given in seconds - enable script to sort tables and graph results.</caption>
	<tbody>
	<tr>
	<th>Browser name</th>
	<th>Cold start</th>
	<th>Warm start</th>
	<th>Rendering CSS</th>
	<th>Rendering table</th>
	<th>Script speed</th>
	<th>Multiple images</th>
	<th>History</th>
	</tr>
	<tr><th>Epiphany 1.0.7</th><td>6.64</td><td>5.82</td><td>2.42</td><td>2.33</td><td>67</td><td>2.91</td><td>58</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Firefox 1.0</th><td>6.09</td><td>2.71</td><td>1.80</td><td>2.10</td><td>59</td><td>2.43</td><td>64</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Firefox 1.5</th><td>9.64</td><td>3.95</td><td>1.72</td><td>2.53</td><td>24</td><td>1.92</td><td>57</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Firefox 2.0</th><td>12.49</td><td>5.89</td><td>1.99</td><td>2.67</td><td>27</td><td>2.27</td><td>61</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Konqueror 3.2 (Gnome)</th><td>13.90</td><td>2.85</td><td>0.80</td><td>1.54</td><td>107</td><td>2.44</td><td>41</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Konqueror 3.4.91 (Gnome)</th><td>14.98</td><td>5.70</td><td>0.91</td><td>2.87</td><td>75</td><td>2.00</td><td>49</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Konqueror 3.2 (KDE)</th><td>3.02</td><td>0.55</td><td>0.80</td><td>1.52</td><td>111</td><td>2.34</td><td>60</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Konqueror 3.4.91 (KDE)</th><td>10.84</td><td>1.23</td><td>0.72</td><td>2.97</td><td>77</td><td>2.11</td><td>48</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Konqueror 3.5.3 (Gnome)</th><td>13.95</td><td>7.10</td><td>0.74</td><td>2.44</td><td>77</td><td>1.97</td><td>66</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Konqueror 3.5.3 (KDE)</th><td>7.69</td><td>1.51</td><td>0.70</td><td>2.27</td><td>84</td><td>1.94</td><td>58</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Mozilla 1.0</th><td>8.50</td><td>3.37</td><td>66.08</td><td>2.00</td><td>128</td><td>2.35</td><td>42</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Mozilla 1.8</th><td>7.97</td><td>2.88</td><td>1.63</td><td>1.74</td><td>26</td><td>2.37</td><td>47</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Opera 6.03</th><td>6.10</td><td>2.60</td><td>0.47</td><td>0.67</td><td>115</td><td>2.32</td><td>55</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Opera 7.54</th><td>11.67</td><td>5.04</td><td>0.65</td><td>1.34</td><td>16</td><td>2.42</td><td>28</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Opera 8.0</th><td>5.80</td><td>4.27</td><td>0.86</td><td>1.32</td><td>10</td><td>1.82</td><td>17</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Opera 9.01</th><td>5.75</td><td>4.60</td><td>0.68</td><td>1.14</td><td>10</td><td>1.54</td><td>9</td></tr>
	</tbody>
</table>
<h3>Mac browsers</h3>
<p>I concentrate mainly on browsers for Mac OS X because no browsers for Mac OS 9 are currently in development (with the
exception of iCab; IE 5 is no longer being updated. There is no standard recent release of Mozilla or related browsers for
OS 9. Opera 7 is not being released for OS 9. Safari, OmniWeb and related browsers only work on OS X).
Opera 8 tests were done using Opera 8 technical preview 1. Mozilla 1.8 tests were done using Mozilla 1.8 alpha 6. Firefox 1.5 tests were done using Firefox 1.5 beta 2. Opera 9 tests were done using Opera 9 technical preview 1.</p>
<p>The tests are done on Mac OS X 10.3.7 (Panther) with the exception of the Safari 2.0 test that is done on a 10.4 (Tiger)
preview. (I tested the other browsers on Tiger as well just to make sure this was a fair test, and got virutally identical
responses as with Panther.) The Safari 2.0 update shows an impressive performance improvement with CSS, DHTML and window
handling. The Opera 8 update has also shown a significant improvement, nearly doubling its scripting speed, and improving
load time and cache handling. (For more Opera/Mac related tests, see my <a href="operaStuff/operaMacSpeed.html">Opera for Mac speed improvements article</a>.)</p>
<p>Hardware; 400 MHz G4, 256 MB RAM. Supposedly the Harvard architecture of the G4 chip makes this approximately equivalent
to an 800 MHz Intel Pentium chip, and therefore this computer is of comparable spec to the one used to run Windows and Linux.</p>
<table>
	<caption>Mac OS X speed chart - times are given in seconds - enable script to sort tables and graph results.</caption>
	<tbody>
	<tr>
	<th>Browser name</th>
	<th>Cold start</th>
	<th>Warm start</th>
	<th>Rendering CSS</th>
	<th>Rendering table</th>
	<th>Script speed</th>
	<th>Multiple images</th>
	<th>History</th>
	</tr>
	<tr><th>Camino 0.8</th><td>2.95</td><td>2.90</td><td>3.08</td><td>2.17</td><td>38</td><td>2.54</td><td>41</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Camino 1.0.2</th><td>8.60</td><td>3.26</td><td>2.75</td><td>1.87</td><td>34</td><td>1.75</td><td>48</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Firefox 1.0</th><td>11.07</td><td>5.84</td><td>4.69</td><td>1.83</td><td>72</td><td>1.83</td><td>51</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Firefox 1.0 (krmathis)</th><td>12.30</td><td>5.89</td><td>3.78</td><td>2.30</td><td>53</td><td>2.45</td><td>49</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Firefox 1.5</th><td>24.58</td><td>6.14</td><td>3.04</td><td>1.94</td><td>40</td><td>1.48</td><td>45</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Firefox 2.0</th><td>16.83</td><td>6.18</td><td>2.97</td><td>1.92</td><td>43</td><td>1.58</td><td>53</td></tr>
	<tr><th>iCab 2.9.8</th><td>3.33</td><td>2.61</td><td>2.12</td><td>2.2</td><td>1906</td><td>3.11</td><td>214</td></tr>
	<tr><th>iCab 3.0</th><td>6.43</td><td>2.84</td><td>1179.72</td><td>6.52</td><td>2073</td><td>2.67</td><td>-</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Internet Explorer 5.2</th><td>3.87</td><td>3.65</td><td>6.12</td><td>3.20</td><td>128</td><td>1.96</td><td>73</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Mozilla 1.0</th><td>19.34</td><td>12.60</td><td>42.31</td><td>3.03</td><td>245</td><td>2.25</td><td>72</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Mozilla 1.8</th><td>10.26</td><td>6.55</td><td>2.88</td><td>2.01</td><td>48</td><td>1.68</td><td>48</td></tr>
	<tr><th>OmniWeb 4.2</th><td>8.45</td><td>5.70</td><td>234</td><td>33</td><td>-</td><td>2.37</td><td>167</td></tr>
	<tr><th>OmniWeb 5.0</th><td>9.06</td><td>6.28</td><td>2.24</td><td>1.50</td><td>116</td><td>2.90</td><td>176</td></tr>
	<tr><th>OmniWeb 5.1</th><td>9.27</td><td>6.01</td><td>1.41</td><td>1.84</td><td>121</td><td>2.36</td><td>200</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Opera 6.03</th><td>14.93</td><td>6.52</td><td>2.98</td><td>1.77</td><td>74</td><td>2.54</td><td>98</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Opera 7.54</th><td>6.94</td><td>6.13</td><td>1.78</td><td>1.75</td><td>36</td><td>1.41</td><td>23</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Opera 8.0</th><td>5.75</td><td>5.47</td><td>1.71</td><td>1.31</td><td>22</td><td>1.33</td><td>16</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Opera 9.01</th><td>4.50</td><td>3.29</td><td>1.77</td><td>1.30</td><td>22</td><td>1.30</td><td>8</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Safari 1.2</th><td>3.21</td><td>3.20</td><td>1.33</td><td>1.34</td><td>164</td><td>1.80</td><td>23</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Safari 2.0</th><td>6.51</td><td>3.33</td><td>0.35</td><td>1.65</td><td>27</td><td>1.67</td><td>38</td></tr>
	</tbody>
</table>
<table>
	<caption>Mac OS 9 speed chart - times are given in seconds - enable script to sort tables and graph results.</caption>
	<tbody>
	<tr>
	<th>Browser name</th>
	<th>Cold start</th>
	<th>Warm start</th>
	<th>Rendering CSS</th>
	<th>Rendering table</th>
	<th>Script speed</th>
	<th>Multiple images</th>
	<th>History</th>
	</tr>
	<tr><th>iCab 2.9.8</th><td>5.33</td><td>1.46</td><td>1.39</td><td>1.99</td><td>-</td><td>2.91</td><td>164</td></tr>
	<tr><th>iCab 3.0</th><td>5.65</td><td>1.61</td><td>1257.67</td><td>8.29</td><td>-</td><td>2.84</td><td>-</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Internet Explorer 5.1</th><td>6.21</td><td>2.43</td><td>9.11</td><td>5.29</td><td>146</td><td>2.22</td><td>81</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Mozilla 1.0</th><td>17.19</td><td>6.43</td><td>24.82</td><td>2.32</td><td>158</td><td>2.05</td><td>58</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Mozilla 1.2.1</th><td>10.88</td><td>5.90</td><td>15.24</td><td>2.30</td><td>155</td><td>2.08</td><td>52</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Opera 6.03</th><td>9.66</td><td>3.56</td><td>3.90</td><td>2.21</td><td>64</td><td>2.57</td><td>76</td></tr>
	</tbody>
</table>
<h3>Windows browsers</h3>
<p>The tests are done on Windows XP SP2. Internet Eplorer 6 is a standard install, Internet Explorer 5 is the zip
package install that can be downloaded from <a href="http://www.quirksmode.org/browsers/multipleie.html">QuirksMode.org</a>.
(IE 5.5 crashed every time I tried to run it.) The Windows performance settings are set to the automatic setting (default).
Opera 8 tests were done using Opera 8 beta 1. Mozilla 1.8 tests were done using Mozilla 1.8 alpha 6. Firefox 1.5 tests were done using Firefox 1.5 beta 2. Opera 9 tests were done using Opera 9 technical preview 1. I also tested the
Moox Firefox install, "optimised" for my particular processer. I tested the new Netscape, which is basically
Firefox with some added rubbish that slows it down. K-Meleon is the only other Gecko browser I tested, as is said to be
the fastest one (although in fact it is slower than Mozilla and Firefox at all tasks except starting).</p>
<p>I also tested a few browsers that are not current browsers (Netscape 4, Escape 4, Clue, Internet Explorer 5.0, Mozilla 1.0, Opera 6.03). This is
done purely for the sake of interest (and it is interesting to note that IE 5.0 is significantly faster than IE 6.0).</p>
<p>Hardware; 800 MHz Intel Pentium 3, 256 MB RAM.</p>
<table>
	<caption>Windows speed chart - times are given in seconds - enable script to sort tables and graph results.</caption>
	<tbody>
	<tr>
	<th>Browser name</th>
	<th>Cold start</th>
	<th>Warm start</th>
	<th>Rendering CSS</th>
	<th>Rendering table</th>
	<th>Script speed</th>
	<th>Multiple images</th>
	<th>History</th>
	</tr>
	<tr><th>Avant 1.1</th><td>10.09</td><td>2.90</td><td>1.31</td><td>1.38</td><td>32</td><td>2.74</td><td>43</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Blazer 4.0</th><td>31.10</td><td>27.82</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>337</td><td>7.94</td><td>-</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Clue 4.2</th><td>5.80</td><td>3.17</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>20.49</td><td>-</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Escape 4.82</th><td>9.75</td><td>6.88</td><td>5.07</td><td>2.67</td><td>391</td><td>3.83</td><td>194</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Escape 5.1.4</th><td>15.94</td><td>11.03</td><td>3.71</td><td>3.04</td><td>354</td><td>3.54</td><td>153</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Firefox 1.0</th><td>11.54</td><td>2.52</td><td>1.81</td><td>1.48</td><td>23</td><td>2.05</td><td>41</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Firefox 1.0 (Moox)</th><td>20.33</td><td>2.78</td><td>3.18</td><td>1.57</td><td>26</td><td>2.84</td><td>41</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Firefox 1.5</th><td>17.26</td><td>2.74</td><td>1.52</td><td>1.58</td><td>21</td><td>2.85</td><td>38</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Firefox 2.0</th><td>11.64</td><td>3.05</td><td>1.71</td><td>1.62</td><td>22</td><td>2.03</td><td>48</td></tr>
	<tr><th>ICEbrowser 6</th><td>15.44</td><td>7.10</td><td>1.84</td><td>1.08</td><td>139</td><td>2.30</td><td>131</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Internet Explorer 5.0</th><td>5.25</td><td>3.11</td><td>0.81</td><td>1.08</td><td>31</td><td>2.25</td><td>34</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Internet Explorer 6.0</th><td>6.99</td><td>1.77</td><td>1.32</td><td>1.33</td><td>60</td><td>2.32</td><td>32</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Internet Explorer 7.0 (b3)</th><td>7.80</td><td>2.40</td><td>2.13</td><td>1.47</td><td>36</td><td>2.47</td><td>39</td></tr>
	<tr><th>K-Meleon 0.8.2</th><td>5.92</td><td>2.67</td><td>2.81</td><td>1.73</td><td>-</td><td>2.60</td><td>40</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Maxthon 1.1</th><td>11.09</td><td>3.24</td><td>1.36</td><td>1.60</td><td>63</td><td>2.70</td><td>32</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Mozilla 1.0</th><td>9.54</td><td>2.81</td><td>21.80</td><td>1.46</td><td>95</td><td>2.04</td><td>58</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Mozilla 1.8</th><td>11.94</td><td>2.48</td><td>1.49</td><td>1.39</td><td>23</td><td>2.00</td><td>40</td></tr>
	<tr><th>NetFront 3.2</th><td>9.19</td><td>8.32</td><td>2.42</td><td>7.47</td><td>65</td><td>7.71</td><td>233</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Netscape 4.77</th><td>9.33</td><td>1.84</td><td>16.60</td><td>2.34</td><td>80</td><td>2.08</td><td>38</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Netscape 8</th><td>24.67</td><td>13.54</td><td>1.43</td><td>1.77</td><td>29</td><td>2.34</td><td>55</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Opera 6.03</th><td>3.74</td><td>1.66</td><td>0.75</td><td>0.72</td><td>64</td><td>2.94</td><td>15</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Opera 7.54</th><td>4.90</td><td>2.40</td><td>0.86</td><td>1.19</td><td>19</td><td>1.87</td><td>21</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Opera 8.0</th><td>3.66</td><td>2.38</td><td>0.92</td><td>1.17</td><td>13</td><td>1.78</td><td>15</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Opera 9.01</th><td>2.47</td><td>2.24</td><td>0.84</td><td>1.08</td><td>13</td><td>1.44</td><td>8</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Safari 3.0</th><td>14.58</td><td>4.44</td><td>0.18</td><td>0.90</td><td>10</td><td>1.50</td><td>56</td></tr>
	<tr><th>WebTV Viewer 2.8</th><td>7.34</td><td>5.04</td><td>13.24</td><td>5.58</td><td>41</td><td>5.84</td><td>154</td></tr>
	</tbody>
</table>
<h2>Conclusions</h2>
<p>No, no. That is up to you. It all depends on how you use your browser and what you use it for, and what operating system(s)
you use it on. Take a look at the tables (and graphs, if your browser's scripting engine is up to the task) and work it out
for yourself.</p>
<p>Ok, ok. Firefox and Mozilla are clearly optimised for Linux, and Opera is clearly optimised for Windows. These optimisations
are mostly obvious with the loading times, although there is also a little difference in the cache handling on the different
operating systems. However, Opera seems to perform admirably well on most tasks, on any platform. When it comes to page rendering
(tables, CSS or images), most of the major
browsers perform very fast, with very little to distinguish between them. When it comes to scripts, Opera clearly holds its
head above the others, nearly twice as fast as the others. The only one that comes close is Safari 2.0, but that is tied to
the Tiger release of Mac OS (the recent WebKit nightlies claim to have a 20-30% speed increase on the JavaScript tests I use,
but I recorded it taking a second longer - a much faster machine showed a similar slowdown).</p>
<p>Opera also is a clear winner using history. In fact, on Linux it is faster
than Mozilla and Firefox for all except starting time. On Mac and Windows, Opera is faster than Mozilla and Firefox for all
tasks. Surprisingly, Mozilla is faster at most tasks than Firefox (please don't send me any more emails about this line,
<a href="emails/NickFagerlund.html#whyfaster">I am well aware of why it is faster</a>). Internet Explorer on Windows was either as fast as - or faster
than Mozilla and Firefox for most tasks, with the exception of scripts, where it took over twice as long. Internet Explorer 7
is closing the gap a little, but the difference is still noticeable. Of course, its poor
standards and security clearly make it a much less attractive prospect. The Moox Firefox install is actually slower than the
standard Firefox versions distributed from Mozilla.org, even though it is supposedly optimised for my particular processor.
The Mac optimised version is a bit better, but trades performance in one area for performance in another, making little or no
difference overall.
The performance of K-Meleon and Epiphany was similar to the performance of Mozilla and Firefox on the same platform. The
new Netscape Browser preview (based on Firefox) was clearly suffering from bloat caused by the AOL add-ons. Firefox 2 is
slower in almost every respect than Firefox 1.5, but this may be due to its being a beta, so it may have debugging settings
slowing it down. I will retest Firefox 2 final.</p>
<p>For those of you who commented that security has nothing to do with speed, try saying the same thing after you have spent hours (or days) cleaning malware off your computer, caused by you running an insecure browser. Overall, the time you waste cleaning up malware more than counterbalances the few seconds you save with the faster engine. And as for standards support, well, speed is not much use if pages are forced to be more bloated and therefore slower to load, simply because the engine does not attempt to support current standards. For example, try seeing how much longer it takes to load a page if it is made using several levels of nested tables instead of clean CSS styling, or one that has to use Dean Edwards' <a href="http://dean.edwards.name/IE7/">IE7</a> script library just to get the page to render correctly.</p>
<p>From a humorous perspective, it is interesting to note that IE on Windows is slowing down, in the majority of tests. Browsers
that use the underlying IE engine (Maxthon or Avant, etc.) generally make IE slower, although Avant manages to make an increase in
scripting speed. Opera
6 was also slightly faster at rendering simple pages than Opera 7-9 on windows and linux, but this is easily outweighed by its slow and
outdated script support, lack of reflow and progressive rendering, slower image and network handling, and slower history on Mac and Linux.
On the other hand, Mozilla has clearly improved a tremendous amount since it's original 1.0 release
(which was actually slower in most respects than its Netscape 4 ancestor),
but it still has a lot of catching up to do before its scripting engine can match Opera's. And it still has competition. Opera's
already faster scripting engine nearly doubled in speed in the 8.0 release, and remains fast in the 9.0 release. Opera 9 is actually
very slightly slower than Opera 8 in the JavaScript speed, but because I round the time to the nearest second, you will not see that
in the tables. The change in speed seems to be caused by the address bar being visible in the popups test, so hopefully it
will not have a noticeable affect on any real Web pages.</p>
<p>One thing I do not take into account here (although it can play a significant role in real pages) is
progressive rendering. For example, with Opera 6, the table was laid out faster, but nothing was displayed until the entire
table was complete. With Opera 7+, the table takes longer to complete (about half a second), but it is progressively displayed,
so the first part is displayed as soon as it is ready, without having to wait for the rest of the table to complete. As a
result, you can actually start reading the page faster with Opera 7+. With pages that are served by slow servers (or if you
have a slower connection), this can make overall browsing speed significantly faster.</p>
<p>The fastest browsers at starting are the less commonly used Konqueror 3.2 (only on KDE), Camino 0.8 and iCab 2, with Konqueror by far the fastest
at a warm start. However, it has one of the slowest script implementations of all the major browsers on Linux, and even though its
cache handling is a bit faster on Gnome, its slow startup time on Gnome outweighs the benefit of better caching. The 3.5.3 release
was supposed to have performance improvements, but while the startup time has been reduced a little, and CSS is a little faster, this
has been at the expense of its history handling and JavaScript engine, which are now even slower than before. The only browsers
that are slower at scripts are Opera 6 and Mozilla 1.0, both of which are old releases that have long since been replaced with much
faster versions. Camino 1.0 has adopted a newer version of the engine, and now its startup time is much closer to those of
the other Gecko browsers (Firefox and Mozilla), so its main advantage has been lost.</p>
<p>Konqueror's sister browsers; Safari 1.2 and OmniWeb are also extremely slow at scripting. IE for Mac is also slow at scripting,
and although it is fast enough to start, it is slow for the other tasks. iCab and (old) OmniWeb 4.2 are the clear losers on Mac,
with OmniWeb 4.2 being the slowest at tables and CSS, and failing completely to run the script tests. iCab 3 managed to produce
the slowest scripting engine time, taking over half an hour - over ten times as long as any other Mac browser, and the slowest
CSS time of any current browser, taking nearly 20 minutes (note, also see supplementary Amaya results below). Safari 2.0 has made
an impressive advance compared with Safari 1.2, in both scripting and rendering. iCab 3 has made significant advances in its
CSS and scripting capabilities, but this has been at the expense of making it perform noticably slower than before at almost all
tasks. Supposedly it has not yet been optimised for speed (since it is currently in closed beta), but it has a long way to
go, and it is doubtful that any optimisations will make much of a difference.</p>
<p>On Mac OS 9 the browsers generally perform slightly better than the same versions on Mac OS X. However, these versions have
long since been left behind by newer and much faster releases that are not available on OS 9. iCab 2 is the fastest at starting
but then fails to perform well enough on most of the other tests. iCab 3 may have far better capabilities, but it is slower
as a result, and fails at some tasks that iCab 2 managed to perform. The other browsers are generally very slow at scripting,
CSS rendering, history, and none of them are particularly fast at starting either.</p>
<p>The java browsers all performed very badly at scripting, most seemed to have a lot of trouble manipulating strings or
performing calculations. ICEbrowser, although initially one of the slowest to start, was the clear winner at all other tasks, as
well as having the most up-to-date scripting and CSS engines. Clue was clearly the worst browser, failing to run most of the
tests. Well, at least I got it to start.</p>
<h3>To summarise</h3>
<p>So overall, Opera seems to be the fastest browser for Windows. Firefox is not faster than Internet Explorer, except for
scripting, but for standards support, security and features, it is a better choice. However, it is still not as fast as Opera,
and Opera also offers a <a href="operaStuff/fanboyRants.html#morecss">high level of standards support</a>, security and features.</p>
<p>On Linux, Konqueror is the fastest for starting and viewing basic pages on KDE, but as soon as script or images are involved, or you want to use
the back or forward buttons, or if you use Gnome, Opera is a faster choice, even though on KDE it will take a few seconds longer to start. Mozilla and
Firefox give an overall good performance, but their script, cache handling and image-based page speed still cannot compare with Opera.</p>
<p>On Mac OS X, Opera and Safari are both very fast, with Safari 2 being faster at starting and rendering CSS, but with Opera still being
distinguishably faster for rendering tables, scripting and history (especially compared with the much slower Safari 1.2). Camino 0.8 is fast to
start, but then it joins its sisters Mozilla and Firefox further down
the list. Neither Mozilla, Firefox nor IE perform very well on Mac, being generally slower than on other operating systems.</p>
<p>On Mac OS 9, no single browser stands out as the fastest. In fact, my condolences to anyone who has to use one of them,
they all perform badly.</p>
<p>These results are drawn from my tests as shown above, and are confirmed by my personal use. Please do not
send me hate mail saying I have insulted your browser or whatever. If you get different results, try doing what I did. Perform
a set of tests like these that cover the major areas of use. Make sure you do it unbiased, cross platform, using the same
or equivalent spec on each (make sure you use the same amount of RAM in each). Once you are done, <em>don't</em> tell me about it.
Publish your own results, as I have done, with a discussion of why you did each test and what it represents. Facts and
figures are everything. Oh, and don't just say "I couldn't get it to install so I didn't bother" - you have no
idea how much work I put into getting all these browsers to install on these operating systems (as my wife and the IRC
community would be able to testify to). If you can't get it to install, then that is your problem, it says nothing about speed, and simply makes your results incomplete.</p>
<h2>Updating the results</h2>
<p>This article is now retired. It was a tough decision, and I know that many of you have come to depend on the
information in this article, but I have faithfully maintained it for nearly two years now, and the time has come.</p>
<p>The main reasons for retiring it are financial and practical; Many of you have asked me to retest on new hardware,
but it took several months to build it to what it is now, and retesting all of them on new hardware is out of the
question. However, computers are moving on, and my testing machines are no longer considered normal.</p>
<p>I could continue testing on the current hardware, and allow you to scale the results (after all, it does not matter
what the performance is, as long as the differences between the browsers can be seen). However, Apple are forcing my hand.
They will not allow me to test new versions of Safari until I buy a new operating system, even though the one I have is
only a little over a year old. Even Microsoft are not that bad (I can still run IE 7 on an operating system released 5
years ago). Apple have simply outpriced themselves, I will not upgrade.</p>
<p>If I did upgrade, I would, of course, introduce a bias. I would have to retest all other browsers on that system, and I
have already said that I will not do that. Apple have also switched to very different hardware. All new Macs use Intel based chips instead
of the older G-series. The performance of Safari on these is different. I have heard that Safari's JavaScript is faster,
as fast as Opera in most cases, or sometimes faster. I cannot prove that without buying one for myself, and sorry, but no
way. I would then have to retest all the browsers on it (see a pattern here?).</p>
<p>I reserve to right to change my mind and update it later anyway, but it will only be if I want to, and see a good enough
reason to (and a way to do it without introducing an unnecessary bias).
Please, enjoy the article as it is now, and do not email me to ask for updates. The results generally scale quite well onto newer hardware, and the browsers'
performances can be seen not to change too much in most cases within minor releases (or even major releases in the case
of browser skins). This article will remain in its current state on this site.</p>
<p>As a final word, I wish to re-iterate that I have done my best to maintain a standard throughout updates. I have never
allowed my employment status, my own browser of choice, or any company to sway my results. This article was written to
satisfy my own curiosity, and I do not want to lie to myself, or my readers. I have maintained as consistent a set of
hardware and software as possible, to ensure my results remain accurate. Therefore you can view the article as it stands
now as an honest reference, and I hope it remains of use to you.</p>
<h2>Supplementary results</h2>
<p>I also tested a few other browsers that were not up to the required capability spec, but are used for accessibility, or general
speed reasons, or often by system administrators who do not have a GUI. In several tests, Lynx and Links2 were so fast that
it was nearly impossible to time, as pages were often loaded faster than buttons could be pressed. Amaya and HotJava are
concept browsers, and are included just for the sake of interest. All tests were on SuSE Linux 9.1 with KDE, except HotJava
which was done on Windows XP (as with the other Java browsers).</p>
<p>Hardware; 800 MHz Intel Pentium 3, 256 MB RAM.</p>
<table>
	<caption>Supplementary speed chart - times are given in seconds - enable script to sort tables and graph results.</caption>
	<tbody>
	<tr>
	<th>Browser name</th>
	<th>Cold start</th>
	<th>Warm start</th>
	<th>Rendering CSS</th>
	<th>Rendering table</th>
	<th>Script speed</th>
	<th>Multiple images</th>
	<th>History</th>
	</tr>
	<tr><th>Amaya 8.7</th><td>5.57</td><td>1.70</td><td>1305.29</td><td>4.52</td><td>-</td><td>3.45</td><td>-</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Dillo 0.8.3</th><td>1.79</td><td>0.64</td><td>2.35</td><td>0.64</td><td>-</td><td>3.70</td><td>115</td></tr>
	<tr><th>HotJava 3.0</th><td>6.41</td><td>4.16</td><td>3.89</td><td>5.09</td><td>-</td><td>4.71</td><td>-</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Links2 2.1.7</th><td>0.47</td><td>0.46</td><td>0.49</td><td>0.17</td><td>-</td><td>2.40</td><td>70</td></tr>
	<tr><th>Lynx 2.8.5</th><td>0.48</td><td>0.12</td><td>0.34</td><td>0.11</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>17</td></tr>
	<tr><th>w3m 0.5.1</th><td>1.70</td><td>0.26</td><td>0.20</td><td>0.66</td><td>-</td><td>2.60</td><td>16</td></tr>
	</tbody>
</table>
	<h2>Navigation</h2>
	<p><a href="./">Back to How To Create</a></p>
	
||||I||||Browser speed comparisons

Skip to results.

A polite request

Please stop posting this article on sites like Slashdot, Digg, newspapers, etc. It is old news. This article is around 2 years old now (although it has been kept up to date), and has been retired - posting it simply shows how long it took you to find it. It has already been posted on Slashdot enough times, Digg more than enough times, similar sites more times than I can count, as well as newspaper sites all around the world, and far more blogs than I will ever be able to read.

I thank you for your attention, and I am very happy that you found this article interesting or useful enough to read. However, it really does not need you to post it yet again - all you will do is eat my bandwidth, and I ask you not to do that.

NYTimes, you may wish to note that this is a site where I publish research articles, tutorials, and scripts. It is not a blog (language warning).

What is this about

There is a speed war on the web. Browsers compete on many fronts; security, standards support, features and speed. Most people are aware of which major browser fails on three of these, but one of them is still open for grabs. Speed.

Many organisations and users try to claim that their browser is the fastest. The Opera site claims that Opera is "The Fastest Browser on Earth!". The Mozilla site claims that "Firefox 1.0 empowers you to browse faster" (faster than what?). Mozilla itself is quoted as being "an alternative to Microsoft IE and it's faster to boot". Apple's Safari pages claim that "Safari loads pages more quickly than any other Mac web browser" (although they failed to show any results for Opera, and their charts fail to show results for pages that contain images). Internet Explorer users often claim that they use it because of its speed, as the alternatives take longer to start and load pages.

Opera and Firefox users are quite vocal on the subject, but none of them can actually show any research to back up their statements, ususally just saying "X takes way longer than Y to start" or "my friend uses X and it is much slower on his computer than Y is on mine". Those that did try more than one usually say "X just felt faster than Y when I tried them" (although this may refer to familiarity with the individual user interface - something that I do not cover here). I have even heard people comparing Firefox and Opera, then realised they were referring to Opera 6 (even though historically, Opera 6 is about equivalent to Netscape 4), something that was replaced with a completely new engine long before Firefox even existed.

Well, I've had enough of these unfounded arguments. I present my research. This is an honest, unbiased view (or as unbiased as I can be). Unlike most people, I not only test all the browsers, I test them all on the same computer as each other - grouped into Linux, Mac and Windows (using the same or equivalent hardware for each). This, I hope, gives an accurate comparison, not only of the browsers compared with each other, but for those that work on multiple platforms, it also gives a fairly accurate comparison of the different optimisations for each platform.

And please, those of you whose browsers did not perform as well as you had hoped, just accept it. Stop with the comments saying this article is biased. It does not matter what I use or you use. This article is not biased. The fastest browsers are the fastest browsers. I appreciate browsers for the sake of them being browsers. I feel no need to tailor tests or alter results to make a browser appear better or worse than it actually is.

The tests

In order to test each browser's speed response, I put them through a number of tests. Each test has a careful set of rules to make sure that I give unbiased results. Each set of tests are grouped by platform, and for each platform, I use just one computer to ensure that the tests compare just the browsers, and not the hardware or software they run on. Each test is done with a default browser install, without tweaking any settings (I know that many browsers perform slightly better if you tweak their network settings, but this is intended to be a test of a standard browser install - some people also suggest that using a native skin makes a browser faster, but I got virtually identical results with native and non-native skins). With Browsers that also offer email or news features, I enabled these clients, but did not have any email or news items in them (some of them may perform differently if they did, but that is not what I was trying to test).

The idea was to find out the fastest browser(s) at performing the major tasks that browser engines are expected to perform. The basic requirements were HTML, CSS, JavaScript, basic DHTML and images - if the browser engine was not capable of performing these tasks then I am not interested and it was not tested.

The tests are not perfect. Obviously nothing can be perfect. But they do give a very good idea of how each browser would cope in each type of situation. Importantly, the tests were not (intentially) tailored towards the strengths or weaknesses of any particular browser.

Cold start This is the time it takes to do a cold load. I log out then in, and then once all background processes have completed, I run the browser as the first program. I use the default settings for the browser, without preloading or quicklaunch tools (unless the browser installs itself this way, as with Internet Explorer on Windows). The browsers are all set to show a single page on startup, and this page is a locally stored basic HTML page. Warm start After completing a cold start, I close the browser, then time how long it takes to start again. I restart it again another two times, and take an average. Rendering CSS To test CSS rendering speed I use a CSS benchmark test devised by nontroppo. The test measures the time it takes the browser to render a page consisting of almost 2500 positioned DIVs. The page is stored locally, loaded once to pre-load it, then reloaded 3 times, and the average time taken for those three renderings. The page is the first page loaded after starting the browser (after logging out and in). All browsers took significantly longer during the initial load, which is why I discount this initial load, as it does not reflect the reality of normal rendering. Rendering table To test table rendering speed I load a local copy of my javascript libraries page. I ignore this first load and then go back and click the link again (ensuring the page and all associated files are cached). I then use a script to time how long it takes to render the page. I take the average of three loads. Script speed To test scripting speed I use the fantastic benchmarking tool at 24fun.com. This is intended for testing multiple browsers on one computer to see how well they perform compared with each other. Small variations in hardware or software can cause big differences in results so it is important that all tests are done on the same computer. After logging out and logging in, I load a browser, clear its cache, enable popups (a requirement of the tests), and then run the tests. The tool tests a good variety of different things, including mathematical calculations, DHTML, string manipulation, image swapping, table manipulation, page content manipulation and window management. With most browsers I test twice and take an average but I did not do that with iCab because it took half an hour the first time, and required me to sit there and babysit it, repeatedly telling it that the script was not an infinite loop, it was just a horrendously slow browser! Multiple images This is done to reflect normal web site handling. I make the browser load a page containing several small images. This requires multiple server connections (or keepalive) and is a good test to see how well the browser manages its network connections, as well as how well it can cope with rendering multiple images simultaneously. After logging out and logging in, I load a browser, clear its cache, then I use Google image search to search for the word 'solid'. This ensures that any referenced pages are pre-cached, and any required DNS lookups are completed, to minimise the effects of DNS delays. Then I load use Google image search to search for three more words (pine, red, stone - don't blame me for the results that come up, I wasn't expecting them either), and I use the average load time of these three pages. (The timer starts when I hit 'search', and stops when all images have completed loading.) My connection speed is 100 Mbps and has no discernable effect on the results. I have also tested it on a 700 Kbps connection and got similar results. Google search time is typically below 0.03 seconds. History Something that is commonly overlooked when checking browser speed, but is very important to overall browsing speed. I use Google image search to search for pine, and I navigate through the result pages 1 to 25. I then start the timer, and go back as quickly as possible to the first result page, then forward as quickly as possible to page 25 again. Each intermediate page must be allowed to load completely - including images - before moving to the next page. (This means that any indicators that the browser provides to show that the page is loading must show the page as loaded before navigating to the next page). I use the fastest means the browser has to navigate, which typically means using keyboard shortcuts. This test demonstrates how efficiently the browser uses caching in order to improve browsing speed.

Note: I did not test plugins like Java or Flash, as these are external programs, and not the browsers themselves. They are affected much more significantly by their own version numbers or memory contraints of the Operating Syetem, and are not really in the browser's own control.

Test results

Sorted alphabetically:

 * Linux browsers
 * Mac browsers
 * Windows browsers
 * (Supplementary browsers)

Test results are shown by default in tabular form. If your browser's scripting engine is up to the task, you can click on the column headings to sort the table by that heading. The fastest browser is marked in each test using light green, or salmon if it was the fastest, but made mistakes trying to obtain that speed. Some results also have more information, that will appear in a tooltip when you hold your mouse over the result. These can be identified in good browsers (I have done an ugly DHTML behaviour to make this happen in Internet Explorer as well - this excuse-for-a-browser is really annoying me) by the Help cursor that the mouse should use while you hold it over those results, and by the » character.

If your browser's scripting engine is good enough, and you enable script, you can view the results in graph format, where you can choose what operating system or browser you want to see results graphed for.

Linux browsers

The tests are done on SuSE Linux 9.1, using KDE (except Epiphany, whose results are shown for Gnome, as that is its normal operating environment). I also tested the browsers on Gnome, but only got significantly different results in Konqueror, so that is the only browser's result I will show for both Gnome and KDE. I only concentrate on the main Gecko based browsers - there are many variants available. Mozilla (SeaMonkey), Firefox and Epiphany are the ones I will test, as these are either the official releases from Mozilla.org, or the official browser of the Gnome DTE. I could not test Galeon (one of the most popular Gnome browsers) as it was not available for the Mozilla version I had installed. However, since it is just a fancy skin for Mozilla (like Epiphany), it's times are likely to be similar to Mozilla's. Opera 8 tests were done using Opera 8 beta 1. Mozilla 1.8 tests were done using Mozilla 1.8 alpha 6. Firefox 1.5 tests were done using Firefox 1.5 beta 2. Opera 9 tests were done using Opera 9 technical preview 1.

NOTE: I have updated the page after discovering that I had done the multiple image test with Opera 8 on Linux set to 'ID as Opera' (not the default setting). This is important because Google uses the wrong HTTP header to check if the browser can handle a gzip compressed page, which Opera can. Instead of checking the Accept-Encoding header, which correctly says this, they check the User-Agent, and only use gzip if the browser claims to be Mozilla or MSIE (other browsers like Safari and Konqueror are also included in this). Setting Opera to use 'ID as MSIE' (default setting) or 'ID as Mozilla 5.0' makes Google send it the compressed version as well. This makes a huge difference, from Opera appearing to be almost the slowest at 2.50 seconds, to being clearly the fastest at 1.82 seconds.

Hardware; 800 MHz Intel Pentium 3, 256 MB RAM.

Linux speed chart - times are given in seconds - enable script to sort tables and graph results.
Browser name Cold start Warm start Rendering CSS Rendering table Script speed Multiple images History
Epiphany 1.0.7 6.64 5.82 2.42 2.33 67 2.91 58 
Firefox 1.0 6.09 2.71 1.80 2.10 59 2.43 64 
Firefox 1.5 9.64 3.95 1.72 2.53 24 1.92 57 
Firefox 2.0 12.49 5.89 1.99 2.67 27 2.27 61 
Konqueror 3.2 (Gnome) 13.90 2.85 0.80 1.54 107 2.44 41 
Konqueror 3.4.91 (Gnome) 14.98 5.70 0.91 2.87 75 2.00 49 
Konqueror 3.2 (KDE) 3.02 0.55 0.80 1.52 111 2.34 60 
Konqueror 3.4.91 (KDE) 10.84 1.23 0.72 2.97 77 2.11 48 
Konqueror 3.5.3 (Gnome) 13.95 7.10 0.74 2.44 77 1.97 66 
Konqueror 3.5.3 (KDE) 7.69 1.51 0.70 2.27 84 1.94 58 
Mozilla 1.0 8.50 3.37 66.08 2.00 128 2.35 42 
Mozilla 1.8 7.97 2.88 1.63 1.74 26 2.37 47 
Opera 6.03 6.10 2.60 0.47 0.67 115 2.32 55 
Opera 7.54 11.67 5.04 0.65 1.34 16 2.42 28 
Opera 8.0 5.80 4.27 0.86 1.32 10 1.82 17 
Opera 9.01 5.75 4.60 0.68 1.14 10 1.54 9 


Mac browsers

I concentrate mainly on browsers for Mac OS X because no browsers for Mac OS 9 are currently in development (with the exception of iCab; IE 5 is no longer being updated. There is no standard recent release of Mozilla or related browsers for OS 9. Opera 7 is not being released for OS 9. Safari, OmniWeb and related browsers only work on OS X). Opera 8 tests were done using Opera 8 technical preview 1. Mozilla 1.8 tests were done using Mozilla 1.8 alpha 6. Firefox 1.5 tests were done using Firefox 1.5 beta 2. Opera 9 tests were done using Opera 9 technical preview 1.

The tests are done on Mac OS X 10.3.7 (Panther) with the exception of the Safari 2.0 test that is done on a 10.4 (Tiger) preview. (I tested the other browsers on Tiger as well just to make sure this was a fair test, and got virutally identical responses as with Panther.) The Safari 2.0 update shows an impressive performance improvement with CSS, DHTML and window handling. The Opera 8 update has also shown a significant improvement, nearly doubling its scripting speed, and improving load time and cache handling. (For more Opera/Mac related tests, see my Opera for Mac speed improvements article.)

Hardware; 400 MHz G4, 256 MB RAM. Supposedly the Harvard architecture of the G4 chip makes this approximately equivalent to an 800 MHz Intel Pentium chip, and therefore this computer is of comparable spec to the one used to run Windows and Linux.

Mac OS X speed chart - times are given in seconds - enable script to sort tables and graph results.
Browser name Cold start Warm start Rendering CSS Rendering table Script speed Multiple images History
Camino 0.8 2.95 2.90 3.08 2.17 38 2.54 41 
Camino 1.0.2 8.60 3.26 2.75 1.87 34 1.75 48 
Firefox 1.0 11.07 5.84 4.69 1.83 72 1.83 51 
Firefox 1.0 (krmathis) 12.30 5.89 3.78 2.30 53 2.45 49 
Firefox 1.5 24.58 6.14 3.04 1.94 40 1.48 45 
Firefox 2.0 16.83 6.18 2.97 1.92 43 1.58 53 
iCab 2.9.8 3.33 2.61 2.12 2.2 1906 3.11 214 
iCab 3.0 6.43 2.84 1179.72 6.52 2073 2.67 - 
Internet Explorer 5.2 3.87 3.65 6.12 3.20 128 1.96 73 
Mozilla 1.0 19.34 12.60 42.31 3.03 245 2.25 72 
Mozilla 1.8 10.26 6.55 2.88 2.01 48 1.68 48 
OmniWeb 4.2 8.45 5.70 234 33 - 2.37 167 
OmniWeb 5.0 9.06 6.28 2.24 1.50 116 2.90 176 
OmniWeb 5.1 9.27 6.01 1.41 1.84 121 2.36 200 
Opera 6.03 14.93 6.52 2.98 1.77 74 2.54 98 
Opera 7.54 6.94 6.13 1.78 1.75 36 1.41 23 
Opera 8.0 5.75 5.47 1.71 1.31 22 1.33 16 
Opera 9.01 4.50 3.29 1.77 1.30 22 1.30 8 
Safari 1.2 3.21 3.20 1.33 1.34 164 1.80 23 
Safari 2.0 6.51 3.33 0.35 1.65 27 1.67 38 

Mac OS 9 speed chart - times are given in seconds - enable script to sort tables and graph results.
Browser name Cold start Warm start Rendering CSS Rendering table Script speed Multiple images History
iCab 2.9.8 5.33 1.46 1.39 1.99 - 2.91 164 
iCab 3.0 5.65 1.61 1257.67 8.29 - 2.84 - 
Internet Explorer 5.1 6.21 2.43 9.11 5.29 146 2.22 81 
Mozilla 1.0 17.19 6.43 24.82 2.32 158 2.05 58 
Mozilla 1.2.1 10.88 5.90 15.24 2.30 155 2.08 52 
Opera 6.03 9.66 3.56 3.90 2.21 64 2.57 76 


Windows browsers

The tests are done on Windows XP SP2. Internet Eplorer 6 is a standard install, Internet Explorer 5 is the zip package install that can be downloaded from QuirksMode.org. (IE 5.5 crashed every time I tried to run it.) The Windows performance settings are set to the automatic setting (default). Opera 8 tests were done using Opera 8 beta 1. Mozilla 1.8 tests were done using Mozilla 1.8 alpha 6. Firefox 1.5 tests were done using Firefox 1.5 beta 2. Opera 9 tests were done using Opera 9 technical preview 1. I also tested the Moox Firefox install, "optimised" for my particular processer. I tested the new Netscape, which is basically Firefox with some added rubbish that slows it down. K-Meleon is the only other Gecko browser I tested, as is said to be the fastest one (although in fact it is slower than Mozilla and Firefox at all tasks except starting).

I also tested a few browsers that are not current browsers (Netscape 4, Escape 4, Clue, Internet Explorer 5.0, Mozilla 1.0, Opera 6.03). This is done purely for the sake of interest (and it is interesting to note that IE 5.0 is significantly faster than IE 6.0).

Hardware; 800 MHz Intel Pentium 3, 256 MB RAM.

Windows speed chart - times are given in seconds - enable script to sort tables and graph results.
Browser name Cold start Warm start Rendering CSS Rendering table Script speed Multiple images History
Avant 1.1 10.09 2.90 1.31 1.38 32 2.74 43 
Blazer 4.0 31.10 27.82 - - 337 7.94 - 
Clue 4.2 5.80 3.17 - - - 20.49 - 
Escape 4.82 9.75 6.88 5.07 2.67 391 3.83 194 
Escape 5.1.4 15.94 11.03 3.71 3.04 354 3.54 153 
Firefox 1.0 11.54 2.52 1.81 1.48 23 2.05 41 
Firefox 1.0 (Moox) 20.33 2.78 3.18 1.57 26 2.84 41 
Firefox 1.5 17.26 2.74 1.52 1.58 21 2.85 38 
Firefox 2.0 11.64 3.05 1.71 1.62 22 2.03 48 
ICEbrowser 6 15.44 7.10 1.84 1.08 139 2.30 131 
Internet Explorer 5.0 5.25 3.11 0.81 1.08 31 2.25 34 
Internet Explorer 6.0 6.99 1.77 1.32 1.33 60 2.32 32 
Internet Explorer 7.0 (b3) 7.80 2.40 2.13 1.47 36 2.47 39 
K-Meleon 0.8.2 5.92 2.67 2.81 1.73 - 2.60 40 
Maxthon 1.1 11.09 3.24 1.36 1.60 63 2.70 32 
Mozilla 1.0 9.54 2.81 21.80 1.46 95 2.04 58 
Mozilla 1.8 11.94 2.48 1.49 1.39 23 2.00 40 
NetFront 3.2 9.19 8.32 2.42 7.47 65 7.71 233 
Netscape 4.77 9.33 1.84 16.60 2.34 80 2.08 38 
Netscape 8 24.67 13.54 1.43 1.77 29 2.34 55 
Opera 6.03 3.74 1.66 0.75 0.72 64 2.94 15 
Opera 7.54 4.90 2.40 0.86 1.19 19 1.87 21 
Opera 8.0 3.66 2.38 0.92 1.17 13 1.78 15 
Opera 9.01 2.47 2.24 0.84 1.08 13 1.44 8 
Safari 3.0 14.58 4.44 0.18 0.90 10 1.50 56 
WebTV Viewer 2.8 7.34 5.04 13.24 5.58 41 5.84 154 


Conclusions

No, no. That is up to you. It all depends on how you use your browser and what you use it for, and what operating system(s) you use it on. Take a look at the tables (and graphs, if your browser's scripting engine is up to the task) and work it out for yourself.

Ok, ok. Firefox and Mozilla are clearly optimised for Linux, and Opera is clearly optimised for Windows. These optimisations are mostly obvious with the loading times, although there is also a little difference in the cache handling on the different operating systems. However, Opera seems to perform admirably well on most tasks, on any platform. When it comes to page rendering (tables, CSS or images), most of the major browsers perform very fast, with very little to distinguish between them. When it comes to scripts, Opera clearly holds its head above the others, nearly twice as fast as the others. The only one that comes close is Safari 2.0, but that is tied to the Tiger release of Mac OS (the recent WebKit nightlies claim to have a 20-30% speed increase on the JavaScript tests I use, but I recorded it taking a second longer - a much faster machine showed a similar slowdown).

Opera also is a clear winner using history. In fact, on Linux it is faster than Mozilla and Firefox for all except starting time. On Mac and Windows, Opera is faster than Mozilla and Firefox for all tasks. Surprisingly, Mozilla is faster at most tasks than Firefox (please don't send me any more emails about this line, I am well aware of why it is faster). Internet Explorer on Windows was either as fast as - or faster than Mozilla and Firefox for most tasks, with the exception of scripts, where it took over twice as long. Internet Explorer 7 is closing the gap a little, but the difference is still noticeable. Of course, its poor standards and security clearly make it a much less attractive prospect. The Moox Firefox install is actually slower than the standard Firefox versions distributed from Mozilla.org, even though it is supposedly optimised for my particular processor. The Mac optimised version is a bit better, but trades performance in one area for performance in another, making little or no difference overall. The performance of K-Meleon and Epiphany was similar to the performance of Mozilla and Firefox on the same platform. The new Netscape Browser preview (based on Firefox) was clearly suffering from bloat caused by the AOL add-ons. Firefox 2 is slower in almost every respect than Firefox 1.5, but this may be due to its being a beta, so it may have debugging settings slowing it down. I will retest Firefox 2 final.

For those of you who commented that security has nothing to do with speed, try saying the same thing after you have spent hours (or days) cleaning malware off your computer, caused by you running an insecure browser. Overall, the time you waste cleaning up malware more than counterbalances the few seconds you save with the faster engine. And as for standards support, well, speed is not much use if pages are forced to be more bloated and therefore slower to load, simply because the engine does not attempt to support current standards. For example, try seeing how much longer it takes to load a page if it is made using several levels of nested tables instead of clean CSS styling, or one that has to use Dean Edwards' IE7 script library just to get the page to render correctly.

From a humorous perspective, it is interesting to note that IE on Windows is slowing down, in the majority of tests. Browsers that use the underlying IE engine (Maxthon or Avant, etc.) generally make IE slower, although Avant manages to make an increase in scripting speed. Opera 6 was also slightly faster at rendering simple pages than Opera 7-9 on windows and linux, but this is easily outweighed by its slow and outdated script support, lack of reflow and progressive rendering, slower image and network handling, and slower history on Mac and Linux. On the other hand, Mozilla has clearly improved a tremendous amount since it's original 1.0 release (which was actually slower in most respects than its Netscape 4 ancestor), but it still has a lot of catching up to do before its scripting engine can match Opera's. And it still has competition. Opera's already faster scripting engine nearly doubled in speed in the 8.0 release, and remains fast in the 9.0 release. Opera 9 is actually very slightly slower than Opera 8 in the JavaScript speed, but because I round the time to the nearest second, you will not see that in the tables. The change in speed seems to be caused by the address bar being visible in the popups test, so hopefully it will not have a noticeable affect on any real Web pages.

One thing I do not take into account here (although it can play a significant role in real pages) is progressive rendering. For example, with Opera 6, the table was laid out faster, but nothing was displayed until the entire table was complete. With Opera 7+, the table takes longer to complete (about half a second), but it is progressively displayed, so the first part is displayed as soon as it is ready, without having to wait for the rest of the table to complete. As a result, you can actually start reading the page faster with Opera 7+. With pages that are served by slow servers (or if you have a slower connection), this can make overall browsing speed significantly faster.

The fastest browsers at starting are the less commonly used Konqueror 3.2 (only on KDE), Camino 0.8 and iCab 2, with Konqueror by far the fastest at a warm start. However, it has one of the slowest script implementations of all the major browsers on Linux, and even though its cache handling is a bit faster on Gnome, its slow startup time on Gnome outweighs the benefit of better caching. The 3.5.3 release was supposed to have performance improvements, but while the startup time has been reduced a little, and CSS is a little faster, this has been at the expense of its history handling and JavaScript engine, which are now even slower than before. The only browsers that are slower at scripts are Opera 6 and Mozilla 1.0, both of which are old releases that have long since been replaced with much faster versions. Camino 1.0 has adopted a newer version of the engine, and now its startup time is much closer to those of the other Gecko browsers (Firefox and Mozilla), so its main advantage has been lost.

Konqueror's sister browsers; Safari 1.2 and OmniWeb are also extremely slow at scripting. IE for Mac is also slow at scripting, and although it is fast enough to start, it is slow for the other tasks. iCab and (old) OmniWeb 4.2 are the clear losers on Mac, with OmniWeb 4.2 being the slowest at tables and CSS, and failing completely to run the script tests. iCab 3 managed to produce the slowest scripting engine time, taking over half an hour - over ten times as long as any other Mac browser, and the slowest CSS time of any current browser, taking nearly 20 minutes (note, also see supplementary Amaya results below). Safari 2.0 has made an impressive advance compared with Safari 1.2, in both scripting and rendering. iCab 3 has made significant advances in its CSS and scripting capabilities, but this has been at the expense of making it perform noticably slower than before at almost all tasks. Supposedly it has not yet been optimised for speed (since it is currently in closed beta), but it has a long way to go, and it is doubtful that any optimisations will make much of a difference.

On Mac OS 9 the browsers generally perform slightly better than the same versions on Mac OS X. However, these versions have long since been left behind by newer and much faster releases that are not available on OS 9. iCab 2 is the fastest at starting but then fails to perform well enough on most of the other tests. iCab 3 may have far better capabilities, but it is slower as a result, and fails at some tasks that iCab 2 managed to perform. The other browsers are generally very slow at scripting, CSS rendering, history, and none of them are particularly fast at starting either.

The java browsers all performed very badly at scripting, most seemed to have a lot of trouble manipulating strings or performing calculations. ICEbrowser, although initially one of the slowest to start, was the clear winner at all other tasks, as well as having the most up-to-date scripting and CSS engines. Clue was clearly the worst browser, failing to run most of the tests. Well, at least I got it to start.

To summarise

So overall, Opera seems to be the fastest browser for Windows. Firefox is not faster than Internet Explorer, except for scripting, but for standards support, security and features, it is a better choice. However, it is still not as fast as Opera, and Opera also offers a high level of standards support, security and features.

On Linux, Konqueror is the fastest for starting and viewing basic pages on KDE, but as soon as script or images are involved, or you want to use the back or forward buttons, or if you use Gnome, Opera is a faster choice, even though on KDE it will take a few seconds longer to start. Mozilla and Firefox give an overall good performance, but their script, cache handling and image-based page speed still cannot compare with Opera.

On Mac OS X, Opera and Safari are both very fast, with Safari 2 being faster at starting and rendering CSS, but with Opera still being distinguishably faster for rendering tables, scripting and history (especially compared with the much slower Safari 1.2). Camino 0.8 is fast to start, but then it joins its sisters Mozilla and Firefox further down the list. Neither Mozilla, Firefox nor IE perform very well on Mac, being generally slower than on other operating systems.

On Mac OS 9, no single browser stands out as the fastest. In fact, my condolences to anyone who has to use one of them, they all perform badly.

These results are drawn from my tests as shown above, and are confirmed by my personal use. Please do not send me hate mail saying I have insulted your browser or whatever. If you get different results, try doing what I did. Perform a set of tests like these that cover the major areas of use. Make sure you do it unbiased, cross platform, using the same or equivalent spec on each (make sure you use the same amount of RAM in each). Once you are done, don't tell me about it. Publish your own results, as I have done, with a discussion of why you did each test and what it represents. Facts and figures are everything. Oh, and don't just say "I couldn't get it to install so I didn't bother" - you have no idea how much work I put into getting all these browsers to install on these operating systems (as my wife and the IRC community would be able to testify to). If you can't get it to install, then that is your problem, it says nothing about speed, and simply makes your results incomplete.

Updating the results

This article is now retired. It was a tough decision, and I know that many of you have come to depend on the information in this article, but I have faithfully maintained it for nearly two years now, and the time has come.

The main reasons for retiring it are financial and practical; Many of you have asked me to retest on new hardware, but it took several months to build it to what it is now, and retesting all of them on new hardware is out of the question. However, computers are moving on, and my testing machines are no longer considered normal.

I could continue testing on the current hardware, and allow you to scale the results (after all, it does not matter what the performance is, as long as the differences between the browsers can be seen). However, Apple are forcing my hand. They will not allow me to test new versions of Safari until I buy a new operating system, even though the one I have is only a little over a year old. Even Microsoft are not that bad (I can still run IE 7 on an operating system released 5 years ago). Apple have simply outpriced themselves, I will not upgrade.

If I did upgrade, I would, of course, introduce a bias. I would have to retest all other browsers on that system, and I have already said that I will not do that. Apple have also switched to very different hardware. All new Macs use Intel based chips instead of the older G-series. The performance of Safari on these is different. I have heard that Safari's JavaScript is faster, as fast as Opera in most cases, or sometimes faster. I cannot prove that without buying one for myself, and sorry, but no way. I would then have to retest all the browsers on it (see a pattern here?).

I reserve to right to change my mind and update it later anyway, but it will only be if I want to, and see a good enough reason to (and a way to do it without introducing an unnecessary bias). Please, enjoy the article as it is now, and do not email me to ask for updates. The results generally scale quite well onto newer hardware, and the browsers' performances can be seen not to change too much in most cases within minor releases (or even major releases in the case of browser skins). This article will remain in its current state on this site.

As a final word, I wish to re-iterate that I have done my best to maintain a standard throughout updates. I have never allowed my employment status, my own browser of choice, or any company to sway my results. This article was written to satisfy my own curiosity, and I do not want to lie to myself, or my readers. I have maintained as consistent a set of hardware and software as possible, to ensure my results remain accurate. Therefore you can view the article as it stands now as an honest reference, and I hope it remains of use to you.

Supplementary results

I also tested a few other browsers that were not up to the required capability spec, but are used for accessibility, or general speed reasons, or often by system administrators who do not have a GUI. In several tests, Lynx and Links2 were so fast that it was nearly impossible to time, as pages were often loaded faster than buttons could be pressed. Amaya and HotJava are concept browsers, and are included just for the sake of interest. All tests were on SuSE Linux 9.1 with KDE, except HotJava which was done on Windows XP (as with the other Java browsers).

Hardware; 800 MHz Intel Pentium 3, 256 MB RAM.

Supplementary speed chart - times are given in seconds - enable script to sort tables and graph results.
Browser name Cold start Warm start Rendering CSS Rendering table Script speed Multiple images History
Amaya 8.7 5.57 1.70 1305.29 4.52 - 3.45 - 
Dillo 0.8.3 1.79 0.64 2.35 0.64 - 3.70 115 
HotJava 3.0 6.41 4.16 3.89 5.09 - 4.71 - 
Links2 2.1.7 0.47 0.46 0.49 0.17 - 2.40 70 
Lynx 2.8.5 0.48 0.12 0.34 0.11 - - 17 
w3m 0.5.1 1.70 0.26 0.20 0.66 - 2.60 16 


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A polite request
Please stop posting this article on sites like Slashdot, Digg, newspapers, etc. It is old news. This article is around
2 years old now (although it has been kept up to date), and has been retired - posting it simply shows how long it took you to find it. It has
already been posted on Slashdot enough times, Digg more than enough times, similar sites more times than I can count, as
well as newspaper sites all around the world, and far more blogs than I will ever be able to read.
I thank you for your attention, and I am very happy that you found this article interesting or useful enough to read.
However, it really does not need you to post it yet again - all you will do is eat my
bandwidth, and I ask you not to do that.
NYTimes, you may wish to note that this is a site where I publish research articles, tutorials, and scripts.
It is not a blog (language warning).
What is this about
There is a speed war on the web. Browsers compete on many fronts; security, standards support, features and speed. Most
people are aware of which major browser fails on three of these, but one of them is still open for grabs. Speed.
Many organisations and users try to claim that their browser is the fastest.
The Opera site claims that Opera is The Fastest Browser on Earth!.
The Mozilla site claims that Firefox 1.0 empowers you to browse faster
(faster than what?). Mozilla itself is quoted as being an alternative
to Microsoft IE and it's faster to boot. Apple's Safari pages claim that Safari
loads pages more quickly than any other Mac web browser (although they failed to show any results for Opera, and their
charts fail to show results for pages that contain images). Internet Explorer users often claim that they use it because of
its speed, as the alternatives take longer to start and load pages.
Opera and Firefox users are quite vocal on the subject,
but none of them can actually show any research to back up their statements, ususally just saying "X takes way
longer than Y to start" or "my friend uses X and it is much slower on his computer than Y is on mine". Those
that did try more than one usually say "X just felt faster than Y when I tried them" (although this may refer to
familiarity with the individual user interface - something that I do not cover here). I have even heard people comparing
Firefox and Opera, then realised they were referring to Opera 6 (even though historically, Opera 6 is about equivalent to
Netscape 4), something that was replaced with a completely new engine long before Firefox even existed.
Well, I've had enough of these unfounded arguments. I present my research. This is an honest, unbiased view (or as unbiased as I
can be). Unlike most people, I not only test all the browsers, I test them all on the same computer as each other - grouped
into Linux, Mac and Windows (using the same or equivalent hardware for each). This, I hope, gives an accurate comparison, not
only of the browsers compared with each other, but for those that work on multiple platforms, it also gives a fairly
accurate comparison of the different optimisations for each platform.
And please, those of you whose browsers did not perform as well as you had hoped, just accept it. Stop
with the comments saying this article is biased. It does not matter what I use or you use. This article is not biased. The fastest
browsers are the fastest browsers. I appreciate browsers for the sake of them being browsers. I feel no need to tailor tests or
alter results to make a browser appear better or worse than it actually is.
The tests
In order to test each browser's speed response, I put them through a number of tests. Each test has a careful set of rules
to make sure that I give unbiased results. Each set of tests are grouped by platform, and for each platform, I use just one
computer to ensure that the tests compare just the browsers, and not the hardware or software they run on. Each test is done
with a default browser install, without tweaking any settings (I know that many browsers perform slightly better if you
tweak their network settings, but this is intended to be a test of a standard browser install - some people also suggest that
using a native skin makes a browser faster, but I got virtually identical results with native and non-native skins). With
Browsers that also offer email or news features, I enabled these clients, but did not have any email or news items in them
(some of them may perform differently if they did, but that is not what I was trying to test).
The idea was to find out the fastest browser(s) at performing the major tasks that browser engines are expected to perform.
The basic requirements were HTML, CSS, JavaScript, basic DHTML and images - if the browser engine was not capable of performing
these tasks then I am not interested and it was not tested.
The tests are not perfect. Obviously nothing can be perfect. But they do give a very good idea of how each browser would
cope in each type of situation. Importantly, the tests were not (intentially) tailored towards the strengths or weaknesses of
any particular browser.
	Cold start
	This is the time it takes to do a cold load. I log out then in, and then once all background processes have completed,
	I run the browser as the first program. I use the default settings for the browser, without preloading or quicklaunch
	tools (unless the browser installs itself this way, as with Internet Explorer on Windows). The browsers are all set to
	show a single page on startup, and this page is a locally stored basic HTML page.
	Warm start
	After completing a cold start, I close the browser, then time how long it takes to start again. I restart it again
	another two times, and take an average.
	Rendering CSS
	To test CSS rendering speed I use a CSS benchmark test devised by nontroppo.
	The test measures the time it takes the browser to render a page consisting of almost 2500 positioned DIVs. The page is
	stored locally, loaded once to pre-load it, then reloaded 3 times, and the average time taken for those three renderings.
	The page is the first page loaded after starting the browser (after logging out and in). All browsers took significantly
	longer during the initial load, which is why I discount this initial load, as it does not reflect the reality of normal
	rendering.
	Rendering table
	To test table rendering speed I load a local copy of my javascript libraries page. I ignore
	this first load and then go back and click the link again (ensuring the page and all associated files are cached).
	I then use a script to time how long it takes to render the page. I take the average of three loads.
	Script speed
	To test scripting speed I use the fantastic benchmarking
	tool at 24fun.com. This is intended for testing multiple browsers on one computer to see how well they perform
	compared with each other. Small variations in hardware or software can cause big differences in results so it is important
	that all tests are done on the same computer. After logging out and logging in, I load a browser, clear its cache, enable
	popups (a requirement of the tests), and then run the tests. The tool tests a good variety of different things, including mathematical calculations,
	DHTML, string manipulation, image swapping, table manipulation, page content manipulation and window management. With most browsers I test twice and
	take an average but I did not do that with iCab because it took half an hour the first time, and required me to sit there
	and babysit it, repeatedly telling it that the script was not an infinite loop, it was just a horrendously slow browser!
	Multiple images
	This is done to reflect normal web site handling. I make the browser load a page containing several small images.
	This requires multiple server connections (or keepalive) and is a good test to see how well the browser manages its
	network connections, as well as how well it can cope with rendering multiple images simultaneously. After logging out
	and logging in, I load a browser, clear its cache, then I use Google image search to
	search for the word
	'solid'. This ensures that any referenced pages are pre-cached, and any required DNS lookups are completed, to
	minimise the effects of DNS delays. Then I load use Google image search to search for three more words (pine, red, stone
	- don't blame me for the results that come up, I wasn't expecting them either), and I use the average load time of these
	three pages. (The timer starts when I hit 'search', and stops when all images have completed loading.) My connection
	speed is 100 Mbps and has no discernable effect on the results. I have also tested it on a 700 Kbps connection and got
	similar results. Google search time is typically below 0.03 seconds.
	History
	Something that is commonly overlooked when checking browser speed, but is very important to overall browsing speed.
	I use Google image search to search
	for pine, and I navigate through the result pages 1 to 25. I then start the timer, and go back as quickly as possible
	to the first result page, then forward as quickly as possible to page 25 again. Each intermediate page must be allowed
	to load completely - including images - before moving to the next page. (This means that any indicators that the browser
	provides to show that the page is loading must show the page as loaded before navigating to the next page). I use the
	fastest means the browser has to navigate, which typically means using keyboard shortcuts. This test demonstrates how
	efficiently the browser uses caching in order to improve browsing speed.
Note: I did not test plugins like Java or Flash, as these are external programs, and not the browsers themselves. They are
affected much more significantly by their own version numbers or memory contraints of the Operating Syetem, and are not
really in the browser's own control.
Test results
Sorted alphabetically:
	 Linux browsers 
	 Mac browsers 
	 Windows browsers 
	(Supplementary browsers)
Test results are shown by default in tabular form. If your browser's scripting engine is up to the task, you can click on
the column headings to sort the table by that heading. The fastest browser is marked in each test using light green, or
salmon if it was the fastest, but made mistakes trying to obtain that speed. Some results also have more information, that
will appear in a tooltip when you hold your mouse over the result. These can be identified in good browsers (I have done an
ugly DHTML behaviour to make this happen in Internet Explorer as well - this excuse-for-a-browser is really annoying me) by the
Help
cursor that the mouse should use while you hold it over those results, and by the » character.
Linux browsers
The tests are done on SuSE Linux 9.1, using KDE (except Epiphany, whose results are shown for Gnome, as that is its
normal operating environment). I also tested the browsers on Gnome, but only got significantly
different results in Konqueror, so that is the only browser's result I will show for both Gnome and KDE. I only concentrate on the main Gecko based browsers - there are many
variants available. Mozilla (SeaMonkey), Firefox and Epiphany are the ones I will test, as these are either the official
releases from Mozilla.org, or the official browser of the Gnome DTE. I could not test Galeon (one of the most popular Gnome
browsers) as it was not available for the Mozilla version I had installed. However, since it is just a fancy skin for Mozilla (like Epiphany),
it's times are likely to be similar to Mozilla's.
Opera 8 tests were done using Opera 8 beta 1. Mozilla 1.8 tests were done using Mozilla 1.8 alpha 6. Firefox 1.5 tests were done using Firefox 1.5 beta 2. Opera 9 tests were done using Opera 9 technical preview 1.
NOTE: I have updated the page after discovering that I had done the multiple image test with Opera 8 on Linux
set to 'ID as Opera' (not the default setting). This is important because Google uses the wrong HTTP header to check
if the browser can handle a gzip compressed page, which Opera can. Instead of checking the Accept-Encoding header,
which correctly says this, they check the User-Agent, and only use gzip if the browser claims to be Mozilla or
MSIE (other browsers like Safari and Konqueror are also included in this). Setting Opera to use 'ID as MSIE'
(default setting) or 'ID as Mozilla 5.0' makes Google send it the compressed version as well. This makes a huge
difference, from Opera appearing to be almost the slowest at 2.50 seconds, to being clearly the fastest at 1.82
seconds.
Hardware; 800 MHz Intel Pentium 3, 256 MB RAM.
	Linux speed chart - times are given in seconds - enable script to sort tables and graph results.
	
	
	Browser name
	Cold start
	Warm start
	Rendering CSS
	Rendering table
	Script speed
	Multiple images
	History
	
	 Epiphany 1.0.7 6.64 5.82 2.42 2.33 67 2.91 58 
	 Firefox 1.0 6.09 2.71 1.80 2.10 59 2.43 64 
	 Firefox 1.5 9.64 3.95 1.72 2.53 24 1.92 57 
	 Firefox 2.0 12.49 5.89 1.99 2.67 27 2.27 61 
	 Konqueror 3.2 (Gnome) 13.90 2.85 0.80 1.54 107 2.44 41 
	 Konqueror 3.4.91 (Gnome) 14.98 5.70 0.91 2.87 75 2.00 49 
	 Konqueror 3.2 (KDE) 3.02 0.55 0.80 1.52 111 2.34 60 
	 Konqueror 3.4.91 (KDE) 10.84 1.23 0.72 2.97 77 2.11 48 
	 Konqueror 3.5.3 (Gnome) 13.95 7.10 0.74 2.44 77 1.97 66 
	 Konqueror 3.5.3 (KDE) 7.69 1.51 0.70 2.27 84 1.94 58 
	 Mozilla 1.0 8.50 3.37 66.08 2.00 128 2.35 42 
	 Mozilla 1.8 7.97 2.88 1.63 1.74 26 2.37 47 
	 Opera 6.03 6.10 2.60 0.47 0.67 115 2.32 55 
	 Opera 7.54 11.67 5.04 0.65 1.34 16 2.42 28 
	 Opera 8.0 5.80 4.27 0.86 1.32 10 1.82 17 
	 Opera 9.01 5.75 4.60 0.68 1.14 10 1.54 9 
	
Mac browsers
I concentrate mainly on browsers for Mac OS X because no browsers for Mac OS 9 are currently in development (with the
exception of iCab; IE 5 is no longer being updated. There is no standard recent release of Mozilla or related browsers for
OS 9. Opera 7 is not being released for OS 9. Safari, OmniWeb and related browsers only work on OS X).
Opera 8 tests were done using Opera 8 technical preview 1. Mozilla 1.8 tests were done using Mozilla 1.8 alpha 6. Firefox 1.5 tests were done using Firefox 1.5 beta 2. Opera 9 tests were done using Opera 9 technical preview 1.
The tests are done on Mac OS X 10.3.7 (Panther) with the exception of the Safari 2.0 test that is done on a 10.4 (Tiger)
preview. (I tested the other browsers on Tiger as well just to make sure this was a fair test, and got virutally identical
responses as with Panther.) The Safari 2.0 update shows an impressive performance improvement with CSS, DHTML and window
handling. The Opera 8 update has also shown a significant improvement, nearly doubling its scripting speed, and improving
load time and cache handling. (For more Opera/Mac related tests, see my Opera for Mac speed improvements article.)
Hardware; 400 MHz G4, 256 MB RAM. Supposedly the Harvard architecture of the G4 chip makes this approximately equivalent
to an 800 MHz Intel Pentium chip, and therefore this computer is of comparable spec to the one used to run Windows and Linux.
	Mac OS X speed chart - times are given in seconds - enable script to sort tables and graph results.
	
	
	Browser name
	Cold start
	Warm start
	Rendering CSS
	Rendering table
	Script speed
	Multiple images
	History
	
	 Camino 0.8 2.95 2.90 3.08 2.17 38 2.54 41 
	 Camino 1.0.2 8.60 3.26 2.75 1.87 34 1.75 48 
	 Firefox 1.0 11.07 5.84 4.69 1.83 72 1.83 51 
	 Firefox 1.0 (krmathis) 12.30 5.89 3.78 2.30 53 2.45 49 
	 Firefox 1.5 24.58 6.14 3.04 1.94 40 1.48 45 
	 Firefox 2.0 16.83 6.18 2.97 1.92 43 1.58 53 
	 iCab 2.9.8 3.33 2.61 2.12 2.2 1906 3.11 214 
	 iCab 3.0 6.43 2.84 1179.72 6.52 2073 2.67 - 
	 Internet Explorer 5.2 3.87 3.65 6.12 3.20 128 1.96 73 
	 Mozilla 1.0 19.34 12.60 42.31 3.03 245 2.25 72 
	 Mozilla 1.8 10.26 6.55 2.88 2.01 48 1.68 48 
	 OmniWeb 4.2 8.45 5.70 234 33 - 2.37 167 
	 OmniWeb 5.0 9.06 6.28 2.24 1.50 116 2.90 176 
	 OmniWeb 5.1 9.27 6.01 1.41 1.84 121 2.36 200 
	 Opera 6.03 14.93 6.52 2.98 1.77 74 2.54 98 
	 Opera 7.54 6.94 6.13 1.78 1.75 36 1.41 23 
	 Opera 8.0 5.75 5.47 1.71 1.31 22 1.33 16 
	 Opera 9.01 4.50 3.29 1.77 1.30 22 1.30 8 
	 Safari 1.2 3.21 3.20 1.33 1.34 164 1.80 23 
	 Safari 2.0 6.51 3.33 0.35 1.65 27 1.67 38 
	
	Mac OS 9 speed chart - times are given in seconds - enable script to sort tables and graph results.
	
	
	Browser name
	Cold start
	Warm start
	Rendering CSS
	Rendering table
	Script speed
	Multiple images
	History
	
	 iCab 2.9.8 5.33 1.46 1.39 1.99 - 2.91 164 
	 iCab 3.0 5.65 1.61 1257.67 8.29 - 2.84 - 
	 Internet Explorer 5.1 6.21 2.43 9.11 5.29 146 2.22 81 
	 Mozilla 1.0 17.19 6.43 24.82 2.32 158 2.05 58 
	 Mozilla 1.2.1 10.88 5.90 15.24 2.30 155 2.08 52 
	 Opera 6.03 9.66 3.56 3.90 2.21 64 2.57 76 
	
Windows browsers
The tests are done on Windows XP SP2. Internet Eplorer 6 is a standard install, Internet Explorer 5 is the zip
package install that can be downloaded from QuirksMode.org.
(IE 5.5 crashed every time I tried to run it.) The Windows performance settings are set to the automatic setting (default).
Opera 8 tests were done using Opera 8 beta 1. Mozilla 1.8 tests were done using Mozilla 1.8 alpha 6. Firefox 1.5 tests were done using Firefox 1.5 beta 2. Opera 9 tests were done using Opera 9 technical preview 1. I also tested the
Moox Firefox install, "optimised" for my particular processer. I tested the new Netscape, which is basically
Firefox with some added rubbish that slows it down. K-Meleon is the only other Gecko browser I tested, as is said to be
the fastest one (although in fact it is slower than Mozilla and Firefox at all tasks except starting).
I also tested a few browsers that are not current browsers (Netscape 4, Escape 4, Clue, Internet Explorer 5.0, Mozilla 1.0, Opera 6.03). This is
done purely for the sake of interest (and it is interesting to note that IE 5.0 is significantly faster than IE 6.0).
Hardware; 800 MHz Intel Pentium 3, 256 MB RAM.
	Windows speed chart - times are given in seconds - enable script to sort tables and graph results.
	
	
	Browser name
	Cold start
	Warm start
	Rendering CSS
	Rendering table
	Script speed
	Multiple images
	History
	
	 Avant 1.1 10.09 2.90 1.31 1.38 32 2.74 43 
	 Blazer 4.0 31.10 27.82 - - 337 7.94 - 
	 Clue 4.2 5.80 3.17 - - - 20.49 - 
	 Escape 4.82 9.75 6.88 5.07 2.67 391 3.83 194 
	 Escape 5.1.4 15.94 11.03 3.71 3.04 354 3.54 153 
	 Firefox 1.0 11.54 2.52 1.81 1.48 23 2.05 41 
	 Firefox 1.0 (Moox) 20.33 2.78 3.18 1.57 26 2.84 41 
	 Firefox 1.5 17.26 2.74 1.52 1.58 21 2.85 38 
	 Firefox 2.0 11.64 3.05 1.71 1.62 22 2.03 48 
	 ICEbrowser 6 15.44 7.10 1.84 1.08 139 2.30 131 
	 Internet Explorer 5.0 5.25 3.11 0.81 1.08 31 2.25 34 
	 Internet Explorer 6.0 6.99 1.77 1.32 1.33 60 2.32 32 
	 Internet Explorer 7.0 (b3) 7.80 2.40 2.13 1.47 36 2.47 39 
	 K-Meleon 0.8.2 5.92 2.67 2.81 1.73 - 2.60 40 
	 Maxthon 1.1 11.09 3.24 1.36 1.60 63 2.70 32 
	 Mozilla 1.0 9.54 2.81 21.80 1.46 95 2.04 58 
	 Mozilla 1.8 11.94 2.48 1.49 1.39 23 2.00 40 
	 NetFront 3.2 9.19 8.32 2.42 7.47 65 7.71 233 
	 Netscape 4.77 9.33 1.84 16.60 2.34 80 2.08 38 
	 Netscape 8 24.67 13.54 1.43 1.77 29 2.34 55 
	 Opera 6.03 3.74 1.66 0.75 0.72 64 2.94 15 
	 Opera 7.54 4.90 2.40 0.86 1.19 19 1.87 21 
	 Opera 8.0 3.66 2.38 0.92 1.17 13 1.78 15 
	 Opera 9.01 2.47 2.24 0.84 1.08 13 1.44 8 
	 Safari 3.0 14.58 4.44 0.18 0.90 10 1.50 56 
	 WebTV Viewer 2.8 7.34 5.04 13.24 5.58 41 5.84 154 
	
Conclusions
No, no. That is up to you. It all depends on how you use your browser and what you use it for, and what operating system(s)
you use it on. Take a look at the tables (and graphs, if your browser's scripting engine is up to the task) and work it out
for yourself.
Ok, ok. Firefox and Mozilla are clearly optimised for Linux, and Opera is clearly optimised for Windows. These optimisations
are mostly obvious with the loading times, although there is also a little difference in the cache handling on the different
operating systems. However, Opera seems to perform admirably well on most tasks, on any platform. When it comes to page rendering
(tables, CSS or images), most of the major
browsers perform very fast, with very little to distinguish between them. When it comes to scripts, Opera clearly holds its
head above the others, nearly twice as fast as the others. The only one that comes close is Safari 2.0, but that is tied to
the Tiger release of Mac OS (the recent WebKit nightlies claim to have a 20-30% speed increase on the JavaScript tests I use,
but I recorded it taking a second longer - a much faster machine showed a similar slowdown).
Opera also is a clear winner using history. In fact, on Linux it is faster
than Mozilla and Firefox for all except starting time. On Mac and Windows, Opera is faster than Mozilla and Firefox for all
tasks. Surprisingly, Mozilla is faster at most tasks than Firefox (please don't send me any more emails about this line,
I am well aware of why it is faster). Internet Explorer on Windows was either as fast as - or faster
than Mozilla and Firefox for most tasks, with the exception of scripts, where it took over twice as long. Internet Explorer 7
is closing the gap a little, but the difference is still noticeable. Of course, its poor
standards and security clearly make it a much less attractive prospect. The Moox Firefox install is actually slower than the
standard Firefox versions distributed from Mozilla.org, even though it is supposedly optimised for my particular processor.
The Mac optimised version is a bit better, but trades performance in one area for performance in another, making little or no
difference overall.
The performance of K-Meleon and Epiphany was similar to the performance of Mozilla and Firefox on the same platform. The
new Netscape Browser preview (based on Firefox) was clearly suffering from bloat caused by the AOL add-ons. Firefox 2 is
slower in almost every respect than Firefox 1.5, but this may be due to its being a beta, so it may have debugging settings
slowing it down. I will retest Firefox 2 final.
For those of you who commented that security has nothing to do with speed, try saying the same thing after you have spent hours (or days) cleaning malware off your computer, caused by you running an insecure browser. Overall, the time you waste cleaning up malware more than counterbalances the few seconds you save with the faster engine. And as for standards support, well, speed is not much use if pages are forced to be more bloated and therefore slower to load, simply because the engine does not attempt to support current standards. For example, try seeing how much longer it takes to load a page if it is made using several levels of nested tables instead of clean CSS styling, or one that has to use Dean Edwards' IE7 script library just to get the page to render correctly.
From a humorous perspective, it is interesting to note that IE on Windows is slowing down, in the majority of tests. Browsers
that use the underlying IE engine (Maxthon or Avant, etc.) generally make IE slower, although Avant manages to make an increase in
scripting speed. Opera
6 was also slightly faster at rendering simple pages than Opera 7-9 on windows and linux, but this is easily outweighed by its slow and
outdated script support, lack of reflow and progressive rendering, slower image and network handling, and slower history on Mac and Linux.
On the other hand, Mozilla has clearly improved a tremendous amount since it's original 1.0 release
(which was actually slower in most respects than its Netscape 4 ancestor),
but it still has a lot of catching up to do before its scripting engine can match Opera's. And it still has competition. Opera's
already faster scripting engine nearly doubled in speed in the 8.0 release, and remains fast in the 9.0 release. Opera 9 is actually
very slightly slower than Opera 8 in the JavaScript speed, but because I round the time to the nearest second, you will not see that
in the tables. The change in speed seems to be caused by the address bar being visible in the popups test, so hopefully it
will not have a noticeable affect on any real Web pages.
One thing I do not take into account here (although it can play a significant role in real pages) is
progressive rendering. For example, with Opera 6, the table was laid out faster, but nothing was displayed until the entire
table was complete. With Opera 7+, the table takes longer to complete (about half a second), but it is progressively displayed,
so the first part is displayed as soon as it is ready, without having to wait for the rest of the table to complete. As a
result, you can actually start reading the page faster with Opera 7+. With pages that are served by slow servers (or if you
have a slower connection), this can make overall browsing speed significantly faster.
The fastest browsers at starting are the less commonly used Konqueror 3.2 (only on KDE), Camino 0.8 and iCab 2, with Konqueror by far the fastest
at a warm start. However, it has one of the slowest script implementations of all the major browsers on Linux, and even though its
cache handling is a bit faster on Gnome, its slow startup time on Gnome outweighs the benefit of better caching. The 3.5.3 release
was supposed to have performance improvements, but while the startup time has been reduced a little, and CSS is a little faster, this
has been at the expense of its history handling and JavaScript engine, which are now even slower than before. The only browsers
that are slower at scripts are Opera 6 and Mozilla 1.0, both of which are old releases that have long since been replaced with much
faster versions. Camino 1.0 has adopted a newer version of the engine, and now its startup time is much closer to those of
the other Gecko browsers (Firefox and Mozilla), so its main advantage has been lost.
Konqueror's sister browsers; Safari 1.2 and OmniWeb are also extremely slow at scripting. IE for Mac is also slow at scripting,
and although it is fast enough to start, it is slow for the other tasks. iCab and (old) OmniWeb 4.2 are the clear losers on Mac,
with OmniWeb 4.2 being the slowest at tables and CSS, and failing completely to run the script tests. iCab 3 managed to produce
the slowest scripting engine time, taking over half an hour - over ten times as long as any other Mac browser, and the slowest
CSS time of any current browser, taking nearly 20 minutes (note, also see supplementary Amaya results below). Safari 2.0 has made
an impressive advance compared with Safari 1.2, in both scripting and rendering. iCab 3 has made significant advances in its
CSS and scripting capabilities, but this has been at the expense of making it perform noticably slower than before at almost all
tasks. Supposedly it has not yet been optimised for speed (since it is currently in closed beta), but it has a long way to
go, and it is doubtful that any optimisations will make much of a difference.
On Mac OS 9 the browsers generally perform slightly better than the same versions on Mac OS X. However, these versions have
long since been left behind by newer and much faster releases that are not available on OS 9. iCab 2 is the fastest at starting
but then fails to perform well enough on most of the other tests. iCab 3 may have far better capabilities, but it is slower
as a result, and fails at some tasks that iCab 2 managed to perform. The other browsers are generally very slow at scripting,
CSS rendering, history, and none of them are particularly fast at starting either.
The java browsers all performed very badly at scripting, most seemed to have a lot of trouble manipulating strings or
performing calculations. ICEbrowser, although initially one of the slowest to start, was the clear winner at all other tasks, as
well as having the most up-to-date scripting and CSS engines. Clue was clearly the worst browser, failing to run most of the
tests. Well, at least I got it to start.
To summarise
So overall, Opera seems to be the fastest browser for Windows. Firefox is not faster than Internet Explorer, except for
scripting, but for standards support, security and features, it is a better choice. However, it is still not as fast as Opera,
and Opera also offers a high level of standards support, security and features.
On Linux, Konqueror is the fastest for starting and viewing basic pages on KDE, but as soon as script or images are involved, or you want to use
the back or forward buttons, or if you use Gnome, Opera is a faster choice, even though on KDE it will take a few seconds longer to start. Mozilla and
Firefox give an overall good performance, but their script, cache handling and image-based page speed still cannot compare with Opera.
On Mac OS X, Opera and Safari are both very fast, with Safari 2 being faster at starting and rendering CSS, but with Opera still being
distinguishably faster for rendering tables, scripting and history (especially compared with the much slower Safari 1.2). Camino 0.8 is fast to
start, but then it joins its sisters Mozilla and Firefox further down
the list. Neither Mozilla, Firefox nor IE perform very well on Mac, being generally slower than on other operating systems.
On Mac OS 9, no single browser stands out as the fastest. In fact, my condolences to anyone who has to use one of them,
they all perform badly.
These results are drawn from my tests as shown above, and are confirmed by my personal use. Please do not
send me hate mail saying I have insulted your browser or whatever. If you get different results, try doing what I did. Perform
a set of tests like these that cover the major areas of use. Make sure you do it unbiased, cross platform, using the same
or equivalent spec on each (make sure you use the same amount of RAM in each). Once you are done, don't tell me about it.
Publish your own results, as I have done, with a discussion of why you did each test and what it represents. Facts and
figures are everything. Oh, and don't just say "I couldn't get it to install so I didn't bother" - you have no
idea how much work I put into getting all these browsers to install on these operating systems (as my wife and the IRC
community would be able to testify to). If you can't get it to install, then that is your problem, it says nothing about speed, and simply makes your results incomplete.
Updating the results
This article is now retired. It was a tough decision, and I know that many of you have come to depend on the
information in this article, but I have faithfully maintained it for nearly two years now, and the time has come.
The main reasons for retiring it are financial and practical; Many of you have asked me to retest on new hardware,
but it took several months to build it to what it is now, and retesting all of them on new hardware is out of the
question. However, computers are moving on, and my testing machines are no longer considered normal.
I could continue testing on the current hardware, and allow you to scale the results (after all, it does not matter
what the performance is, as long as the differences between the browsers can be seen). However, Apple are forcing my hand.
They will not allow me to test new versions of Safari until I buy a new operating system, even though the one I have is
only a little over a year old. Even Microsoft are not that bad (I can still run IE 7 on an operating system released 5
years ago). Apple have simply outpriced themselves, I will not upgrade.
If I did upgrade, I would, of course, introduce a bias. I would have to retest all other browsers on that system, and I
have already said that I will not do that. Apple have also switched to very different hardware. All new Macs use Intel based chips instead
of the older G-series. The performance of Safari on these is different. I have heard that Safari's JavaScript is faster,
as fast as Opera in most cases, or sometimes faster. I cannot prove that without buying one for myself, and sorry, but no
way. I would then have to retest all the browsers on it (see a pattern here?).
I reserve to right to change my mind and update it later anyway, but it will only be if I want to, and see a good enough
reason to (and a way to do it without introducing an unnecessary bias).
Please, enjoy the article as it is now, and do not email me to ask for updates. The results generally scale quite well onto newer hardware, and the browsers'
performances can be seen not to change too much in most cases within minor releases (or even major releases in the case
of browser skins). This article will remain in its current state on this site.
As a final word, I wish to re-iterate that I have done my best to maintain a standard throughout updates. I have never
allowed my employment status, my own browser of choice, or any company to sway my results. This article was written to
satisfy my own curiosity, and I do not want to lie to myself, or my readers. I have maintained as consistent a set of
hardware and software as possible, to ensure my results remain accurate. Therefore you can view the article as it stands
now as an honest reference, and I hope it remains of use to you.
Supplementary results
I also tested a few other browsers that were not up to the required capability spec, but are used for accessibility, or general
speed reasons, or often by system administrators who do not have a GUI. In several tests, Lynx and Links2 were so fast that
it was nearly impossible to time, as pages were often loaded faster than buttons could be pressed. Amaya and HotJava are
concept browsers, and are included just for the sake of interest. All tests were on SuSE Linux 9.1 with KDE, except HotJava
which was done on Windows XP (as with the other Java browsers).
Hardware; 800 MHz Intel Pentium 3, 256 MB RAM.
	Supplementary speed chart - times are given in seconds - enable script to sort tables and graph results.
	
	
	Browser name
	Cold start
	Warm start
	Rendering CSS
	Rendering table
	Script speed
	Multiple images
	History
	
	 Amaya 8.7 5.57 1.70 1305.29 4.52 - 3.45 - 
	 Dillo 0.8.3 1.79 0.64 2.35 0.64 - 3.70 115 
	 HotJava 3.0 6.41 4.16 3.89 5.09 - 4.71 - 
	 Links2 2.1.7 0.47 0.46 0.49 0.17 - 2.40 70 
	 Lynx 2.8.5 0.48 0.12 0.34 0.11 - - 17 
	 w3m 0.5.1 1.70 0.26 0.20 0.66 - 2.60 16 
	
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Browser speed comparisons
https://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html