Skip to main content

BANDWIDTH SPEED: What we measure

Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data that can be transferred over a network or internet connection in a given amount of time. The Bandwidth Speed Widget runs an HTTPS speed test from the user’s device to your data center location and provides a general indication of the link quality.

Note: There are many similarities between the Throughput and Bandwidth Speed tests as both tests indicate network performance. However, Throughput is the amount of data traveling successfully across a network, and bandwidth is the maximum data volume capacity of a network. Measuring network bandwidth doesn't consider whether a test data transfer results in a successful or unsuccessful data transmission.

Widget results



This test provides a general indication of the link quality, which gives a hint as to the availability of a fiber connection, ADSL or other. It also gives an estimate to the upper limit of the connection speed available between the user’s location and your infrastructure.

Data we collect and share

Best Region The best region is the elected speed testing data center selected to conduct the test. It is selected based on the latency of the DNS request and the geoIP of the client versus the available data centers.
Uplink Shows the uplink speed of the connection. The speed at which an HTTP connection can send data from the client to the server. Higher values usually means better network conditions.
Downlink Shows the downlink speed of the connection. The speed at which an HTTP connection can send data from the server to the client. Higher values usually means better network conditions.
Jitter Calculated by conducting a quick succession of short ping tests, checking the delay variation in the replies arrival time. Lower values usually means better network conditions.

Things to notice

  • WebRTC sessions prefer sending media over UDP and necessitate low latency to conduct real time sessions. The bandwidth speed test doesn’t focus on the needs of WebRTC, but rather on the link capacity. This test takes place over HTTPS (a TLS connection), sending and receiving a large static file and calculating the time it takes to send it over the wire.
  • From the information collected you can deduce the type of connection and its symmetricity. To that end you would be looking for higher uplink and downlink values and low jitter values.
  • If you can’t connect and there is no results showing, then in all likelihood your network can’t reach out to the speed testing server. This may be the result of firewall rules.

Was this article helpful?

0 out of 0 found this helpful