MySpeed PC supports two types of speed testing, socket-to-socket and HTTP. The socket-to-socket option will test the connection as fast as it can operate by connecting the client socket directly to the server socket and sending uncompressible data for the time allocated to test (usually 8 seconds).

The HTTP test option uses the web server such as Apache/IIS to conduct the test using a file on the server that contains uncompressible data. This is more of a real world test. The duration of an HTTP test is either the time allocated for the test (usually 8 seconds) or until the data in the file is exhausted. MySpeed will automatically failover to doing an HTTP test when the socket connection is blocked by the firewall.

For additional information please review
http://www.myspeed.com/support/faq.html#socket and
http://www.myspeed.com/support/faq.html#expect.

MySpeed reports the Quality of Service (QOS) for your Internet connection, which represents the level of consistent download bandwidth (or throughput) provided by your ISP. The higher QOS percentage, the higher the overall quality of the connection -- which results in better connections for VoIP (voice over IP), Citrix and other high traffic applications. Full Details

Max Pause is the longest pause recorded during the download speed test. This should be a very small number. If not, it could indicate Internet congestion or a bad Internet connection.

Round-Trip Time is the time taken for MySpeed Personal Edition to send a small request packet to the server, and to receive back a response. This indicates how good the connection path is between you and the server. For best results on a broadband connection, you should test using a server with a RTT of less than 150ms, and ideally less than 100ms. Of course, if your connection is performing poorly then the RTT will be greater than this - and that provides another statistic to report to your ISP.

Most broadband vendors design their networks with 'typical usage' in mind. For the Internet, most people spend a lot more time downloading (music, videos, web sites, etc) than uploading (sending email, etc). By using this design, the savings (in a lower cost network) are passed on to you.

Under ideal network conditions, MySpeed will provide virtually identical results every time that it is run (verified in lab conditions). And that accuracy is only possible because MySpeed times data transfers down the millisecond (1/1000 second), while most other speed testers can only time data transfers accurate to 1/100 of a second (10's of milliseconds). So MySpeed is very precise.

However, in most environments, you will find that you are sharing the network, your Internet connection, and the server you are connecting to, with other Internet users. So unless you are the only person using the network and the server, you can and should expect a little variation in the results.

If you see wildly different results each time MySpeed is run, that strongly suggests that you are sharing your network and/or server with too many other Internet users.

It should. However, some aggressive firewall techniques may interfere with the MySpeed upload test. If you experience problems please contact us.

For information on hosting MySpeed on your website please see MySpeed Server.