Application speed is the actual real end-to-end speed that a TCP application will achieve for the connection being tested. This will encompass all the inherent TCP flow control delays as well as quality invoked delays, such as packet loss. In other words it is an accurate measure created by a test process that ensures the data flow matches the requirement of the application such as a Video.

Capacity Speed is NOT usually a measure of how a connection will perform when used to view a video or listen to music, but is a measure of the data rate a connection can sustain, i.e. a Capacity of the connection. As a result Capacity Speed is unlikely to provide result that reflects the user’s real experience. More info.

MyConnection reports the Quality of Service (QOS) for your Internet connection, which represents the level of consistent download bandwidth (or throughput) provided by your ISP. The higher QOS percentage, the higher the overall quality of the connection -- which results in better connections for VoIP (voice over IP), Citrix and other high traffic applications. More info.

Max Pause or Max Delay is the longest pause recorded during the download speed test. This should be a very small number. If not, it could indicate Internet congestion or a bad Internet connection. More info.

Round-Trip Time is the time taken for MyConnection PC to send a small request packet to the server, and to receive back a response. This indicates how good the connection path is between you and the server. For best results on a broadband connection, you should test using a server with a RTT of less than 150ms, and ideally less than 100ms. Of course, if your connection is performing poorly then the RTT will be greater than this - and that provides another statistic to report to your ISP. More info.

Most broadband vendors design their networks with 'typical usage' in mind. For the Internet, most people spend a lot more time downloading (music, videos, web sites, etc) than uploading (sending email, etc). By using this design, the savings (in a lower cost network) are passed on to you.

Under ideal network conditions, MyConnection PC will provide virtually identical results every time that it is run (verified in lab conditions). And that accuracy is only possible because MyConnection measures data transfers down the millisecond (1/1000 second), while most other speed testers can only time data transfers accurate to 1/100 of a second (10's of milliseconds). So MyConnection PC is very precise.

However, in most environments, you will find that you are sharing the network, your Internet connection, and the server you are connecting to, with other Internet users. So unless you are the only person using the network and the server, you can and should expect some variation in the results.

If you see wildly different results each time MyConnection is run, that strongly suggests that you are sharing your network and/or server with too many other Internet users.

It should. However, some aggressive firewall techniques may interfere with the MySpeed upload test. If you experience problems please contact us.

For information on hosting MyConnection tests on your website please see MyConnection Server.