I have a tendency to use data and wifi speed testing apps more often than I really need to. It's a nice way to tell if your service provider is giving you the advertised speeds or not. Obviously, you'll never receive what they advertise, but it's always nice to have faster download and upload speeds. I've maxed out at 17 Mbps on Sprint's network, which isn't that great here. Then I've gone far higher with my home network. It's always nice to see the actual data speeds rather than trusting that they're fast.
I feel you. I open up SpeedTest several times each day for no reason at all. I kind of get paranoid every time I feel the internet slowing down. When pages load slower than normal or when my stream abruptly stops, my fingers head to SpeedTest almost on autopilot.
I do that do back then but not for the same reason because I know that my ISP would be all over the place with their promise of speed and the only time I check on SpeedTest is when my connection is going crazy and I can't get a stable speed.
I think these apps are really cool and are required by quite a lot of people . I also use this app but not to that great extent. The maximum internet speed I get over here is 1 Mbps which is the normal speed over here. However, I get better speed with my home network.
I've never really trusted these apps to be honest with you. It's just far too easy for your internet/cell provider to remove throttling for them, so they make it look like you are getting fantastic download speeds, then go back to throttling everything else you do. Time Warner Cable would always show that I was getting like 7 mb/s download speeds in m area, but I have never, ever gotten a file to download faster than 1mb/s ever. And if I am downloading several files at once, they never, collectively go over 1mb/s. Verizon was a total joke for it's wireless - I had both the original Motorola Droid with them as well as the Droid Bionic, regardless of their supposedly wide coverage, downloads were always slow and I was constantly losing my data connection when I was traveling and using Google Navigation. T-Mobile has been better, their speeds show download speeds of 35 mb/s, and they are noticeably faster in general, such as when I am downloading a game from the app store - but they are still not *that* fast (35mb/s), so I suspect they are throttling then removing the throttling for speed tests as well. The only main problem I've had with T-mobile is when you lose a connection, it's completely gone - there are no weak connections with them, you either have a great connection or none at all. This is especially true when I am in certain stores for some reason. One other thing to keep in mind, especially if you are not on an unlimited data plan, is that SpeedTest uses about 75mb of your data up every time you use it.
Thee are some online apps and websites that are more than enough to help you test your wifi speed. Believe me they are more than enough. No need for any app to test the speed.
To me, downloading a data and Wi-Fi speed testing app is futile and pointless. Well this might apply only to me, because my internet speed is always fast and reliable, so I don't have to worry about stuff like this. But if my speed was seemingly falling below the advertised expectations and rather really slow, I'd probably try using this app and then confront my provider about the issue.
