LAN Speed Testing Primer Tutorial
Worrying about WAN (Wide Area Network) issues can sometimes overtake our thinking regarding issues like response time, when using the Internet, when perhaps there should be more emphasis on the concerns of LAN (Local Area Network). By that, we mean that no matter how good the response time speed of the public website is that you are trying to visit, if your LAN is sick, it makes no difference that that public website is so responsive.
A tool you might need for monitoring how your home network is performing is a “speed tester”, and when prompted to do so by our service provider here, on an iPad, we arrived at a very good iOS mobile application by Ookla called The Global Broadband Speed Test. We arrived at this product by it being the “first cab off the rank” on the iPad …
Apple Store -> Search for "speed test"
… and you can read more both about the mobile application and a webpage for testing on a laptop, for instance , here.
A third party product is a good choice for such a test, and it can be a diagnostic tool measuring …
- Ping rate
- Download Speed
- Upload Speed
… to “look from afar” at your home network. Used over a time period, such a tool may help you to isolate whether the issue is to do with …
- the WiFi and/or Ethernet networking (LAN) (routers and devices and computers and bluetooth equipment) you use within your premises … versus …
- the outside “line” of communication your telecommunication provider services you with
Streaming services such as NetFlix and Stan and Presto rely on a good “Download Speed”, and we were told when it drops below 10 start to worry … so when we took a reading of it at 0.7 my hair started to fall out … then looking in the mirror I noticed that we’d been having slow download speeds for more than a decade … but we digress.
Anyway, today’s tutorial is a sprinkling of screenshots of the Ookla mobile application, and its installation onto an Apple iPad tablet.
If this was interesting you may be interested in this too.
