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Interpreting Your Results

A number of factors may affect bandwidth, so you may have to retest several times to get accurate results (see About Bandwidth for a detailed explanation). However, in general, if your Transmission Speed (highlighted above in orange) is roughly 85% of the rated connection speed for your modem or device, you're receiving acceptable throughput. Of course, if you're sharing a connection, you can't expect to get the full bandwidth. The typical rated speeds are as follows (Note: These are the speeds for download only; rated speeds for uploads may be different for your connection. See About Bandwidth for more):
  • Dial-up modem: 28.8 to 56Kbps, depending on your modem. There's the possibility of compression boosting things a bit, but the test blocks we use are mostly random characters, so they're not very compressible.
  • ISDN: 64Kbps (1 B-channel) or 128Kbps (2 B-channels)
  • DSL: 256Kbps to 1.5Mbps (1500Kbps)
  • Cable Modem: 1.5 to 3Mbps (1500 to 3000 Kbps)
  • T1: 1.544Mbps (1544Kbps) for a point-to-point dedicated line
  • T2: 6.312Mbps (6312Kbps) for a point-to-point dedicated line
  • T3: 44.736Mbps (44073Kbps) for a point-to-point dedicated, digital circuit