In today's world, most of us cannot live without the internet anymore. We use it for gaming, for work, for education, for research, and for fun. Once upon a time, we all used dial-up internet, which was painfully slow. Today, most of us have broadband, satellite, underground cables, and other technology that gives us high speed internet. But just how fast is it? You can find out by performing an internet speed online test.

Factors Affecting Speed:

When you sign up to an internet provider, they should tell you the internet speed that they offer. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that it is actually the speed that you get. In fact, there are many factors that influence your actual speed, including your geographical location, how many users are on the same line as you, global Internet usages, the weather, quality of the cables, and more. If you click on your internet connection icon on the bottom toolbar of your desktop, you should see an internet speed that is probably closer to the actual speed than what your provider told you. However, that isn't an exact science either.

The Internet Speed Online Test:

If you truly want to know what your internet speed is, which can be important for a variety of reasons, you need to conduct an internet speed online test. Some of the reasons why you may want to do this include:

– Because you want to know if it is fast enough for your particular needs. Gamers, for instance, need higher speeds.

– Because you want to make sure that your provider is being honest with you, so that you can switch providers if need be

– Because you want to know whether your computer is running slow, indicating a potential issue, or whether it is the internet

Luckily, there are plenty of tools online that enable you to truly test your speed. Interestingly, this has developed tremendously over the past few months and years. In the past, internet speed was tested by downloading a file to your computer and measuring how long that download took. Your speed, therefore, was based solely on download speed.

Now, however, upload speed is equally important. While in the past, you would simply download a file, internet speed tests today download a file to your computer, and then upload it back to the provider. The speed you are then provided with is usually shown as a download speed, an upload speed, and an average of the two.

A word of warning: to test your internet speed, you must download a file and upload it again. There is always a chance, therefore, that the file contains malware that you will then put on your computer, and this could potentially upload your personal details back to the provider you chose. This is why you should never test your internet speed without first having a virus scanner and firewall installed on your computer. You also have to make sure that you only use an online internet test from a trusted provider.