Reasons not to do a test to measure WiFi
When a speed test is performed on a website, what is done is the average download and upload from the client that is doing the test, to the speed test server. If you did speed tests to check WiFi speed at home, you should know that you are making a mistake, and you should not measure wireless speed in this way.
When we do a speed test to measure WiFI, we must take into account the following aspects:
- Our Internet connection is faster than the theoretical speed of the Wi-Fi? In these cases, we would not have a bottleneck due to the Internet connection itself.
- Does the internet connection is slower than the theoretical speed of WiFi? In these cases, you will not be able to make the most of wireless connectivity, so it will not help you to do the tests.
Although the Internet connection is faster than the WiFi speed, you should also take into account the following:
- Is our connection stable and always gives us the same speed?
- It is possible that the speed test server is crashedbecause many people try to do exactly the same as you.
- Sometimes there are problems with the operator peering with the test servers, so we could have a bottleneck in a link between our operator’s routers, making the measurement unreliable.
Due to all these problems that we can find when doing the tests, it is best to test locally, using a client server program. The two most used and recommended programs are Jperf and also iperf3, of both programs we have complete tutorials in RedesZone. Thanks to these programs, we will be able to check the WiFi speed reliably, of course, the computer that acts as a server should be connected via network cable to the router or switch, and not have it connected via WiFi.
In the case of jperf2, we have a graphical interface based on Java that will greatly facilitate the execution of the test, however, our recommendation is that you use iperf3 through the Windows command line. This last program is much more accurate and reliable, in addition, if you have devices with Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 6E, it is highly recommended to use this last program because for speeds greater than 1Gbps real it is more accurate and does not have as many problems. like jperf2.
Once you have configured the server on a PC connected via network cable to the router or switch, you will have to use the same program on computers, or download the applications compatible with iperf2 (jperf) or iperf3:
The operation of mobile applications is exactly the same as on computers, in addition, we have a fairly intuitive graphical interface with which we can configure how we want to carry out the speed test.