What are these bandwidth speed tests?

Speedtest.net's Mini test is a two-way test between our servers located in Lake Point, UT and your computer. The older Bandwidth Meter is a simple one-way test of the connection to your computer from our server.

What do the speed tests measure?

These programs test how fast your computer can load data from the Wireless Beehive server. They do not necessarily measure the speed of your connection, but rather the speed at which data is received and appears in your browser. This method is a quick evaluation of the throughput provided by our system.

What don't the speed tests measure?

These tests do not indicate how fast you will always be able to connect to your favorite web site. They only measure the transmission of data across our network. From Lake Point on to the rest of the world, many factors will affect the speed at which you connect with your target website.

First and foremost is the capacity of the computer (server) at the far end. Large internet servers like Google and Yahoo have massive computer networks that will probably never suffer from congestion problems. However, if you are connecting to a smaller company or a personal web page running on someone's home machine, that computer may be slow or congested. 

Second, the connection that the target server has to the rest of the world has a remarkable affect on speed. Even if the target server is not congested and is a very fast computer, if they are using a slower connection than you, that will be the primary limiting factor of the speed of the connection.

Third, the distance between you and the target. You can do a "traceroute" ( "tracert" command at a Windows command prompt) to detect the number of intermediate routers (hops) that exist between you and them. The higher the number, the more likely you are to notice lower responsiveness and speed.