What are Broadband speed tests

Broadband speed test are simple online applications that are used to see what speed your internet connection runs at.

They generally test both the download speed and the upload speed. The download speed is usually a faster speed than the upload speed, this is because we spend more time having things downloaded from the internet (such as every website you load up) than we do uploading (such as when you send an email).

How a broadband internet speed test works is by giving your computer a file to download and the time it takes for this to complete will help give an indication as to how fast the speed is of your broadband, it will also perform an upload test to measure the speed of you upload.

A broadband speed test can prove very useful for anyone who is experiencing slower than normal internet speeds and wants to know if there is a problem. Running a speed test makes it very useful to report back to your ISP to help show if there is a problem or not.

There are various different broadband speed tests to try:
- Broadband Speed Test - Broadband Watchdog