To check the speed of your Internet connection, you can use specialized online services (Speedtest, nPerf), measure the speed by downloading a large file or use the iperf test utility.
NOTE: Important! Measurement results are approximate and may not always be accurate.
For correct measurement and to obtain a valid value, the test should only be performed from one client connected to the router via cable (disconnect other clients from the network to eliminate their influence on the test results).
Do not perform the test from clients connected to the router via Wi-Fi. If the internet connection to the router comes over a network cable (dedicated line), then the measurement should be carried out from a client connected to the router by cable.
Do not use a traffic priority. If traffic priority is used, the hardware network accelerator (ppe hardware; hwnat) is disabled for the client device, as the accelerator does not know how to handle traffic prioritization. If the accelerator is switched off, the speed may be reduced. On the 'Client Lists' page, set the 'Traffic priority' field to 'Normal (Default)' for the tested client device.
Disable applications that use Internet traffic (torrents, online videos, games, etc.) for the test duration.
To obtain more accurate and reliable results, we recommend you check your internet speed 2-3 times on different services and compare the results. Take into account the average result. The measured speed results are approximate and should be lower (approximately 5-6% for IPoE and up to 10% for PPPoE, L2TP, and PPTP) than the claimed maximum speed of the Internet channel for your tariff plan (this is due to the amount of service information used during data transfer).
Test results can vary considerably depending on the load on the ISP's data channels, servers, time of day the test is performed, type of connection, etc.
The following are examples of measuring internet connection speeds from the router's local network.
1. Test the speed of your internet connection using online services.
Launch a web browser on a computer connected directly to the router.
One of the most popular services is Speedtest.
We want to point out some special features when using it.
The service automatically selects the optimum server to test the speed by default. But it is important to consider the location of the server itself. Sometimes the service does not correctly choose the server to be tested. The service allows you to specify the server manually. To do this, click the link 'Change server', choose the server and then run the test.
You will get three figures from the test: Ping, Download speed (speed of incoming connection; speed from Internet to subscriber) and Upload speed (speed of outgoing connection; rate from subscriber to Internet). Ping indicates the time (in milliseconds) it takes for a special network packet sent from the client to reach the selected server and receive a response (the shorter the time, the better).
Incoming connection speed affects how quickly websites are opened, and files are downloaded from the Internet. Outgoing connection speed is used when transferring data from your computer to the Internet (for example, when uploading photos or files to the cloud).
Another popular online service is nPerf. It also allows you to check the speed of your Internet connection.
If the figures obtained from Speedtest and nPerf are very different from those stated in your tariff plan, we recommend you check the speed of your Internet connection by downloading a large file.
TIP: Note: You can use an Android mobile device (smartphone or tablet) to measure your Internet speed. Connect it to your Keenetic Wi-Fi router and turn off the mobile data connection. You can use the Speedtest or nPerf.
2. Measuring Internet speed by downloading a large file.
Start downloading a large file from the Internet to your computer (use a file between 1 and 2 GB; it can be a video file, iso image, zip archive, etc.) and measure the time it takes to download the file. Then, knowing the size of the file and the time, you can calculate the approximate download speed of the file.
You can download a file to your computer that you have previously placed on a cloud service (e.g. from Dropbox or Google Drive).
Here is an example. A file of 1.34 GB has been uploaded to Google Drive. Then, download the file from the cloud to your computer, but be sure to determine when the file was downloaded using a clock or stopwatch.
In this case, the download of a 1.34 GB file was 1 minute and 20 seconds (80 seconds). Now divide the file size (in Megabytes) by the download time (in seconds): 1340/80=16,75 Мbyte/s. Internet speed is usually specified in Megabits, so convert Megabytes to Megabits by multiplying the previously calculated value by the number 8: 16,75*8=134 Мbit/s. In our example, the value of 134 Mbit/s is approximately the same as the claimed internet speed of 150 Mbit/s.
NOTE: Important! Your Internet plan always states your maximum connection speed in Megabits per second (Mbps), and the download speed in the user applications (Internet browsers, download managers, torrent clients) is displayed in Kilobytes or Megabytes per second (KB/s, Kbytes/s or MB/s, Mbytes/s). These values are often confused.
To convert Megabytes into Megabits, multiply the Megabyte value by 8. For example, if your Internet browser shows a download speed of 5 Mbytes/sec, multiply this value by 8 to convert it to Megabytes: 5*8 = 40 Мbit/s.
To convert from Megabit to Megabytes, divide the Megabit value by 8.
3. Using the iperf utility.
Iperf3 — cross-platform console client-server program, TCP and UDP traffic generator for testing network throughput with PCs.
For Android mobile devices, you can use the app Magic iPerf including iPerf3.
We will look at an example of using the iperf3 utility on a Windows PC.
You can download iperf3 from https://iperf.fr/iperf-download. Versions for various operating systems (Windows, macOS, Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Fedora, Red Hat, CentOS, OpenSUSE, Arch Linux, FreeBSD) are available for download.
Copy the public iperf3 server from https://iperf.fr/iperf-servers.php#public-servers or https://iperf.cc/. And then, at the command line of your computer's operating system, run a command like:
iperf3 -Vc <iperf3_server_address>
For example:
iperf3 -Vc ping.online.net
You will then see the result of running this command.
iperf3 -Vc ping.online.net Connecting to host ping.online.net, port 5201 Cookie: PC.1555245892.167914.414a41c70922fc7 TCP MSS: 1440 (default) [ 4] local 192.168.0.31 port 39980 connected to 31.192.104.200 port 5201 Starting Test: protocol: TCP, 1 streams, 131072 byte blocks, omitting 0 seconds, 10 second test [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr Cwnd [ 4] 0.00-1.00 sec 8.88 MBytes 74.5 Mbits/sec 0 1.02 MBytes [ 4] 1.00-2.00 sec 11.2 MBytes 93.9 Mbits/sec 0 1.02 MBytes [ 4] 2.00-3.00 sec 11.2 MBytes 93.7 Mbits/sec 0 1.02 MBytes [ 4] 3.00-4.00 sec 11.2 MBytes 93.9 Mbits/sec 0 1.02 MBytes [ 4] 4.00-5.00 sec 11.2 MBytes 93.7 Mbits/sec 0 1.02 MBytes [ 4] 5.00-6.00 sec 11.2 MBytes 93.9 Mbits/sec 0 1.02 MBytes [ 4] 6.00-7.00 sec 11.2 MBytes 93.8 Mbits/sec 0 1.02 MBytes [ 4] 7.00-8.00 sec 11.2 MBytes 93.6 Mbits/sec 0 1.02 MBytes [ 4] 8.00-9.00 sec 11.2 MBytes 93.6 Mbits/sec 0 1.02 MBytes [ 4] 9.00-10.00 sec 11.6 MBytes 97.3 Mbits/sec 0 1.02 MBytes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Test Complete. Summary Results: [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr [ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 110 MBytes 92.2 Mbits/sec 0 sender [ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 109 MBytes 91.6 Mbits/sec receiver CPU Utilization: local/sender 2.2% (0.2%u/1.9%s), remote/receiver 0.1% (0.0%u/0.1%s) iperf Done.
The value in the Bandwidth column shows the average speed in Mbit/s resulting from the test.
For further detailed information on the iperf3 utility, see the manual Testing local connection bandwidth with iperf.