Common mistakes to avoid when running Wi-Fi speed test

Being a good way to determine how fast the internet connection is, there are more and more people running speed tests these days. However, Not all people know how to test the Wi-Fi speed accurately. Check out this article to see common mistakes to avoid when testing Wi-Fi speed.

A lot of today’s devices have a Wi-Fi connection. It must be so inconvenient and disturbing when our Wi-Fi signal is weak. That’s why it’s necessary to test the speed to make sure the Wi-Fi connection on our devices is strong and stable. But, you won’t likely get accurate test results if you run the test improperly. But it’s not difficult to get accurate Wi-Fi speed test results as long as you avoid common mistakes listed right below here.

There are a variety of factors affecting the accuracy of your Wi-Fi speed test

Run the Wi-Fi speed test only once

There are a variety of factors affecting the accuracy of your test results. Running the Wi-Fi speed test for just one time is so hard for you to get a complete picture of your Wi-Fi speed. That’s why you should run multiple tests, only one test seems never enough.

In fact, we could run the test 2 times in the same conditions and receive different results. By performing it 3 times and more at different hours of the day, you can compare the results as well as create an average measurement of your Wi-Fi speed. In that way, you have a more accurate measurement of your actual internet speed.

Running Wi-Fi speed test from an older device

An older device like an older PC may not be able to fully measure the speed of your internet service. So, the results that you get when running the test from this type of device seems so inaccurate. For this reason, you should run Wi-Fi speed checks from multiple devices. 

Try running the tests with your laptop, your tablet, and your mobile phone as well. Of course, you need to make sure you are connected to your Wi-Fi connection, not your mobile data connection when running the test. After that, let’s take all the test results, compare them, and average them together to see how your speed actually is.

Wi-Fi signal strength is different in different areas in your house

Running the test just in a place that’s too far away from the router

Do you know that Wi-Fi signal strength is different in different areas in your house? In fact, certain wall materials or any physical obstacles can potentially interfere with the strength of your Wi-Fi signal. That’s why the place where you perform your Wi-Fi speed check ( https://gospeedcheck.com/ ) hugely affects the results of the test. 

Performing speed tests in rooms or places that are too far away from your router makes it so hard to accurately measure the actual speed of your connection. The nearer you are to your router, the stronger Wi-Fi connection will be. So, to fully measure your Wi-Fi speed, you should run the test in the same location or the same room as your wireless router.

Perform the test with unnecessary programs or applications running on the test device itself

One of the problems people often ignore when testing internet connection speed is the network bandwidth consumption happening on the test device. Well, heavy use like Netflix streaming during your speed test will negatively impact on your speed results for sure.

Even if you are not running obvious bandwidth-consuming programs, there could be other ones using your network without you even noticing it. So, you should ensure no unnecessary applications or programs are running on the background of your test device while you are running the test. 

Running the test while other devices are using the network really impacts your Wi-Fi speed test results

Running the test while other devices are using the network

Many of us have different devices such as laptops, smartphones, tablets connected to the wireless networks at a time, and our internet bandwidth is split up because of that. It causes the connection to slow down, or cause the signal to appear slower on each device. 

Running the test while other devices are using the network really impacts your Wi-Fi speed test results. So, you should disconnect as many devices as possible from your network so that you will have more accurate speed results.

In case there are devices connected to your network, you should make sure that none of them are uploading or downloading large files or in heavy use.

Running the test only at peak hours of the day

Your internet service might work well during off-peak times but it might be much slower at peak hours of the day. During peak hours such as on a Sunday evening when everyone is watching Netflix, you will likely experience slower speeds as compared to other times. So, the speed results will reflect this by featuring low numbers of Mbps. 

So, if you are trying to test the performance of your connection during busy periods, you should run the tests at both peak hours and off-peak hours then compare the results to see the differences.

That’s why you should never run the test only once. And if you want to measure your overall Wi-Fi speed, then you should perform speed tests at off-peak hours.

Forget to reboot your device

We can test Wi-Fi speed on different devices as long as they have a browser or an app installed. Well, whatever device you choose to run the test, you should restart it first.

In fact, devices that have not been restarted for a long time often have residual processes running in their background which can slow them down. And that might affect your speed test results. 

So, before performing the test, you should restart your device and don’t launch any unnecessary apps or programs. This can help you have more accurate speed results. 

Conclusion

Running Wi-Fi speed tests sounds simple. But as you can see, it isn’t that simple because different factors are affecting the accuracy of the test. Well, in this article, we introduced to you 7 common mistakes to avoid when testing Wi-Fi speed that can help you have more accurate speed results. We hope that this article provided you with useful information.

See more:

• Things you should know about speed check of internet

Cre: helpdeskgeek.com/networking/xx-wi-fi-speed-tests-and-common-mistakes/

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