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Internet speed test for exams and video calls.
A speed test that tells you whether the connection is good enough for a proctored exam or a call, not just how fast it is. It talks only to this site.
One check
- Internet
One check after another, with your progress along the top and a plain verdict on each. Nothing you show the camera or say into the microphone leaves this page.
In short
Internet speed test: the answer first
This internet speed test answers whether your connection is good enough for a call or a proctored exam, not only how fast it is. It measures latency and jitter, download and upload over parallel streams, and how much latency rises while the line is busy, all against this site only.
Reading your result
- Upload is the figure for exams and calls
- Your camera streams up the whole time. Compare upload with the 1.5 to 3 Mbps most platforms require.
- Jitter freezes video on fast lines
- Jitter is how much each round trip differs from the one before. High jitter with good speed usually means Wi-Fi interference.
- Latency under load is bufferbloat
- If latency climbs while the line downloads or uploads, a call stutters whenever someone else in the house streams. The grade shows how far it climbed.
What it measures
Measured here, not assumed.
- Latency and jitter
- Twenty small round trips to this site, the first two dropped as the connection opens. The median is latency. Jitter is the average change from one round trip to the next, the RFC 3550 definition, and is what makes video freeze on a fast connection; the standard deviation is shown beside it as spread.
- Download
- Five seconds over four parallel streams, six once the first second shows more than 100 Mbps, with the first second discarded as ramp: the convention Ookla and Cloudflare use. The headline is the 90th percentile of 250 ms windows after the ramp, Ookla's method, with the mean over the phase beside it. Capped at 64 MB, because this is run by people on metered connections.
- Upload
- The same the other way for five seconds, with pieces that grow from 256 KB to 2 MB and a 32 MB cap. Upload is the figure a proctored exam depends on, because it streams your camera the whole time.
- Latency under load
- A small round trip every 200 ms during the download and the upload, after the ramp. The idle, download and upload medians are shown with the increase, graded on Waveform's bufferbloat bands: A+ under 5 ms added, A under 30, B under 60, C under 200, D under 400, F beyond. The Cloudflare speed test reports the same increase as loaded latency.
- Against the common minimums
- Most vendors require 1.5 Mbps each way and recommend 3 Mbps or more. ITU-T G.114 gives 150 ms one way as the limit for comfortable conversation and 400 ms as unusable; a browser measures a round trip, so half of it is compared with those lines. The jitter line of 50 ms is ours.
If it fails
The usual failures, and what fixes each.
- Upload is too low
- Connect with a network cable if you can. On Wi-Fi, move closer to the router and away from walls. Pause cloud backups, downloads and streaming on every device in the house for the exam.
- Latency or jitter is high
- Turn off any VPN. Prefer a cable to Wi-Fi. If the connection is mobile or satellite, ask the vendor whether it is acceptable and keep an alternative ready.
- The test could not run
- Something on the network blocked the test traffic, usually a strict proxy or a corporate filter. Try a home network, or run the check without a VPN.
Where a browser stops
What it cannot tell you.
- How the connection will behave at exam time. Networks are busier in the evening; run the test at the time of day the exam will be.
- Whether the vendor's own servers are as close as ours. Latency to them may differ.
- What is sharing the connection. Other devices streaming or backing up cut into upload most.
- Packet loss. A loss test needs a relay server at the other end, which we do not run, so it is reported as not measured.
- How long the name lookup takes. We have no uncached hostname of our own to time, and we do not time other sites.
Privacy
Nothing leaves this page.
The camera and microphone are read on this page and stopped as soon as they have been measured. The clip you can play back lives in the browser's memory and is discarded when you leave. The location check discards the position. The internet test sends random bytes to this site and nothing else. The result is stored nowhere unless you ask for it by email, and then only the fact that an email was sent is kept.
Questions
Internet speed test, answered
- What internet speed do I need for an online proctored exam?
- Most vendors require at least 1.5 Mbps download and upload and recommend 3 Mbps or more, with a stable connection. A few require far more. Upload matters most, because the exam streams your camera.
- Why is my video freezing when my speed test is fast?
- Jitter. A connection can be fast on average and still deliver data unevenly, which shows as frozen video. Wi-Fi interference is the usual cause; a cable removes it.
- Is Wi-Fi good enough for an online exam?
- Often, but a cable is steadier. If the test shows high jitter or upload near the minimum on Wi-Fi, use a cable or sit next to the router for the exam.
- Why does this test give a different number from other speed tests?
- It uses the same method as the well-known tests, several parallel streams with the first second discarded and the 90th percentile of short windows as the headline, but it talks to this site rather than to the nearest server of a large network, so on a very fast line it can read lower. The verdict against the exam minimums is the point, and the mean over the run is shown beside the headline.
- Why does this differ from another speed test?
- Speed tests use different servers and methods. This one talks only to this site, discards the first second as ramp, and reports the 90th percentile of short windows, so compare runs here with each other.
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