There are many dimensions involved in assessing the performance of your Internet service, from the line your ISP provides, to the WiFi coverage and performance within your home. Sometimes, even computer settings and options can have a big impact.

To help customers sort through the various scenarios, this page will document and guide you on several steps you can take to asses your performance.

End to end speed tests

For performing complete end-to-end tests, there are several tests that now report latencies and some even give a BufferBloat score. Those are documented on the Internet Quality Tests page.

But please follow the following guidelines for the most accurate results:

  • Use a fast, modern computer or tablet to run this. Accuracy drops on slow devices.

  • Use Google Chrome as the browser or if Mac / iOS use Safari

  • Preferably, a desktop/laptop directly wired via Ethernet into the router

  • Alternately, if using WiFi, be within 5 to 10’ line-of sight of the router/WiFi access point

  • Ensure there is a little traffic on the network as possible, as reading accuracy will be affected if another device is busy uploading/downloading something.

Interpreting the results

When the selected speedtest completes, they display an image summarizing the test. Some also have a ‘Details’ (or similar button) which when clicked-on will show much more detail about your test. The most important being the latency measurements.

An IQrouter should have low-latency metrics, as the traffic management should be controlling the bloat. But do note that on extremely slow DSL lines (below 3Mbps), the latencies in the link and the associated backhaul are often not related to bloat but to high link-level retransmissions, which can only be corrected with a better line.

Some of the tests report a metric they call ‘Quality’ or ‘Packet loss’, that reflect all packet re-transmissions. If the re-transmission is due to ISP infrastructure deficiencies, it would be fair to characterize that as a lack of quality, but traffic management algorithms also generate re-transmissions under load (as the line lacks capacity), and these are an expected side effect of maintaining low-latency flows. So depending on source, it is either a bad or a good thing. We put more weight on the bloat grade and low-latencies as being more relevant to what the customer perceives as true internet quality.

To minimize drops as a signaling method, the IQrouter also supports Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) as a method to tell devices to ‘slow down’, this results in near-perfect metrics for packet loss.
Please read more about this, including how to ensure your device(s) have ECN fully enabled, at our page on Packet Loss.

Router-based Speed test

The most accurate measure of the ISPs line true capability is to run a test that accounts for all the traffic running through the router, and means it must be run on the router itself. The IQrouter is the first router to feature a super-accurate speed test that reports true total (not just test) throughputs.
The results are shown on the Customer Dashboard and the Overview page (the Throughput value is the total line capacity measured by the router).