Help and Frequently Asked Questions

Open the internet speed test, choose a mode and press Start. The test downloads and then uploads data for a few seconds each and shows download, upload, ping and jitter. For the number closest to your plan speed, run it once on a LAN cable; on Wi-Fi you measure your Wi-Fi as well as the line.

It depends on what runs at the same time. Netflix recommends 5 Mbps for each Full HD stream and 15 Mbps for 4K, YouTube recommends a steady 20 Mbps for 4K, and Zoom recommends 3.8 Mbps upload for a 1080p group call. Add up what your home does in its busiest hour with the internet speed calculator, which uses these published figures plus some headroom.

Speed tests and internet providers use megabits per second (Mbps), while download managers and browsers usually show megabytes per second (MB/s). One byte is 8 bits, so divide Mbps by 8 to get MB/s: 100 Mbps is about 12.5 MB/s. Our results show both.

Multiply the file size in MB by 8 and divide by your speed in Mbps to get the time in seconds. A 1 GB game update at 100 Mbps takes about 80 seconds. Real downloads are usually a little slower, because the server may be slower than your line and some of each packet is overhead.

In flats, many routers share the same few 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi channels, and they get busiest when your neighbours are online, often in the evening. If the slowdown happens only on Wi-Fi, try your router's 5 GHz network, or test room by room to see where it drops. If a test on a cable is slow at the same hours, it is not your Wi-Fi: the internet stability test can log it through the evening.

No website can tell 5G from 4G, because browsers do not share that detail; even Chrome reports "4g" for any fast connection. Check the 5G or 4G icon in your phone's status bar while the test runs. The 5G and 4G mobile speed test also lets you cap how much data one test uses.

Ping is the time a small message takes to reach a server and come back, shown in milliseconds (ms). The classic ping command sends ICMP echo requests and prints the round-trip times. Browsers cannot send ICMP, so our online ping test times small HTTPS requests instead, which usually reads a few milliseconds higher than ping in a terminal.

Lower is better, and steady matters as much as low. Our gaming region board calls under 50 ms great, under 80 ms good and under 120 ms fair; these are our own thresholds, not a game maker's. TRAI's quality-of-service benchmark for fixed broadband is latency at or below 50 ms, but TRAI measures differently, so treat our browser figure as a guide, not a regulatory measurement.

Jitter is how much your ping changes from one moment to the next; we report it as the average difference between one ping sample and the next. Microsoft lists jitter or packet loss as the likely cause when calls cut out or voices sound like robots. The video call test shows jitter next to your upload speed.

Use a LAN cable or the 5 GHz Wi-Fi network, which usually give steadier ping than 2.4 GHz. Riot's own advice for high ping is to restart your router, use a cable if you can, check ping to other sites, run tracert and send the result to your provider. If ping jumps only while someone else is downloading or streaming, the cause is bufferbloat; the bufferbloat test grades it.

Bufferbloat is the extra delay you get when your router or modem holds too much data in a queue. You notice it as lag in games or calls while someone else downloads, uploads or streams. A faster plan rarely fixes it; the fix is a router setting called SQM or "smart queue". Our A to F grade for it is explained under our rating thresholds.

A web page cannot reach a game's own servers, so our tests time cloud data centres or Cloudflare's nearest server instead. The game measures its own path to its own server, which can be in another city. BGMI, Valorant and Free Fire do not publish a required ping, and Riot says its in-game warning levels vary by region and patch. The gaming ping test shows how fast you reach cloud regions in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Singapore.

Short drops are easy to miss with a single test, so leave a test running while they happen. The internet stability test keeps the tab measuring for as long as you like, logs every drop and lag spike, and gives you a report to send to your provider. Keep the tab open and the device awake, or the log will have gaps.

DNS (Domain Name System) turns a name like google.com into the IP address your device connects to, a bit like a phone book. Your phone or router normally asks your provider's DNS server, but you can choose a public resolver such as Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) or Google (8.8.8.8). A slow DNS server delays the start of each new website, not the download speed once it starts. The DNS lookup tool shows the answers a name returns.

Private DNS is an Android setting that sends DNS questions encrypted to a resolver you choose, on Wi-Fi and mobile data. Open Settings, search for Private DNS, choose "Private DNS provider hostname" and type the resolver's hostname, for example one.one.one.one (Cloudflare) or dns.google (Google). It needs a hostname, not an IP address, and menu names differ between phone brands. The Android Help page on Private DNS notes that it secures only DNS questions and answers, nothing else.

There is no single answer, because it depends on your provider, your city and the resolver's nearest server. The DNS speed test compares public resolvers from your own browser over DNS-over-HTTPS, while your phone or router normally uses plain DNS on port 53, so treat its ranking as a strong hint, not a guarantee. A faster resolver speeds up looking up names; it does not lower in-game ping or raise download speed.

Write down your current DNS settings first. If a hotel or office Wi-Fi login page stops appearing after the change, switch DNS back to automatic until you are logged in. The Google Public DNS setup guide also warns that some provider-supplied routers do not let you change DNS; if yours does not, change it on each phone or computer instead.

Traceroute lists the routers your traffic passes through on the way to a site, with the delay to each one. It sends packets whose time-to-live starts at 1 and grows by one each time, so each router along the path reports back in turn, up to 30 hops by default. Our online traceroute runs from a Globalping volunteer probe, named in the result, not from your own computer.

A row of * * * (or "Request timed out" in Windows) means that router did not answer the trace, and many routers are set not to. If later hops answer normally, the path is fine. Worry only when every hop after a point shows stars; Microsoft's tracert documentation explains the same behaviour.

The first hops often belong to your own router or your provider's internal network, which use private addresses such as 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x. An address from 100.64.0.0 to 100.127.255.255 is shared address space that providers use for carrier-grade NAT (CGNAT). Both are normal and not a fault; what is my IP checks whether you are behind CGNAT.

On Windows, open Command Prompt and type tracert -d google.com; the -d skips name lookups, so it finishes faster. On a Mac or Linux, type traceroute google.com in Terminal. MTR runs a traceroute again and again and shows loss and delay for every hop: mtr -r -c 20 google.com prints a report after 20 rounds. Loss that starts at one hop and continues to the last hop points to a real problem; loss at a middle hop only is usually that router ignoring probes.

An IP address is the number that identifies a connection on the internet, and websites see the public address your provider gives you. Open what is my IP address to see your public IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and the provider (ISP) they belong to. The town shown next to an IP address is approximate; it often shows your provider's nearest hub, not where you are.

A private address is used only inside a network, such as the 192.168.x.x addresses your router gives your phone and laptop. RFC 1918 reserves three blocks for this: 10.x.x.x, 172.16.x.x to 172.31.x.x, and 192.168.x.x. A public address is reachable on the internet, and your router shares one public address among all your devices.

Your provider probably uses carrier-grade NAT (CGNAT), where many customers share one public IPv4 address. Port forwarding on your home router then does not reach you from the internet, because the provider's NAT sits in front of it. Consoles often show "Moderate" or "Strict" NAT for the same reason, and Xbox's NAT troubleshooting guide ends by asking your provider for a public IP address. IPv6 or a relay service are the other ways around it.

IPv6 is the newer, much larger address system that lets each device have its own public address, so traffic does not need to pass through the provider's shared IPv4 NAT. IPv6 use in India is well above the world average: Google saw 68% of its users in India connect over IPv6 on 28 September 2026, against 46% worldwide. The IPv6 test checks whether your connection and browser can use it.

It means the test stopped while the speed was still climbing, so the real figure is at least that number. The result says why: "limited by data cap" or "still rising when the time limit ended". Data saver results are often lower limits on lines faster than about 60 Mbps download (or 25 Mbps upload), and Standard results on lines faster than about 200 Mbps. If you are on unlimited fibre, choose Gigabit mode on the internet speed test for the full number.

For the speed tests, see how much data a speed test uses on the home page: at most 37, 217 or 876 MB, by test size. The other tests use much less. In our own runs, the ping test used about 0.3 MB per minute, one gaming ping run and a DNS speed test each well under 1 MB, and the internet stability test about 13 MB per hour with its default settings (about 0.3 GB a day). The data use table lists every test; on mobile data, the 5G and 4G mobile speed test lets you pick a cap of 10, 25 or 50 MB.

Your recent results are kept only in your own browser (local storage), up to the last 50 of each kind, so you can compare runs; there are no accounts and no analytics. Share links and share images leave your IP address out. The "Clear history" button under each test, or clearing this site's data in your browser, deletes them.

Whichever server a test talks to sees your IP address, as with any website. Speed tests go to Cloudflare, the ping and gaming tests to the servers they time (such as Cloudflare, Google and Amazon Web Services), the DNS tests to public DNS resolvers, and traceroute runs on Globalping, whose measurements are public. The privacy policy lists every service, what it sees and a link to its own policy.

M-Lab publishes every test result, including your IP address, as open data for internet research. Because of that, the box is never ticked in advance and the test runs only after you agree. The M-Lab speed test page explains what the test measures.

Complain to your provider's complaint centre through its app, chat or customer care, and keep the docket number. Under TRAI's complaint rules, every complaint gets a docket number by SMS with the expected resolution time, and where no other time limit applies it must be resolved within 3 days. TRAI has also told providers to show a clearly visible "Customer Care" link on their website and app homepage. Attach a few saved results, for example the summary from the broadband speed test, taken on a cable at different times of day.

Appeal to your provider's Appellate Authority within 30 days after the resolution time ends; a late appeal can still be accepted up to 3 months with sufficient cause. There is no fee, and you can file by email, post, in person or through customer care. TRAI's FAQ says the appeal is decided within 39 days of filing. TRAI's TCCMS portal shows the Appellate Authority for your provider.

TRAI does not resolve individual complaints; its FAQ says the TRAI Act does not provide for that, so use your provider's complaint centre and then its Appellate Authority. Our results are a useful record, but they are measured differently from TRAI's method and are a guide, not a regulatory measurement. For an official record you can show your provider, also run TRAI MySpeed.

Not always. TRAI's 2012 complaint rules exempt internet providers with a turnover of ₹5 crore or less, or 10,000 or fewer subscribers, in the previous financial year, so a very small local cable provider may not be covered. Ask it for its own complaint process in writing. The National Consumer Helpline handles consumer complaints of every kind.

Heavy tests start only when you press Start, so opening a page never uses much of your data. Small lookups, such as your IP address and provider, may run after the page has loaded. Before a speed test starts, the page shows how much data it may use.

After a speed test, use the buttons under the result to share or download an image, copy a link, copy the result as text, or download it as CSV or JSON. The link carries the numbers inside the address itself, so nothing is stored on our server, and it leaves out your IP address. Recent results also stay in the history table on the speed test page in the same browser.

No. MPATEL Speed Test is independent and is not affiliated with any internet provider, app or test service named on these pages; brand names only say what a page tests. The speed tests use Cloudflare's public test servers, the second-opinion test uses M-Lab, and traceroutes run on Globalping probes. About this site explains how each test works.