About netgauge

Why netgauge exists

Most speed tests stop at download and upload numbers. netgauge also measures latency, jitter, and bufferbloat — the delay that shows up when your connection is fully loaded, which is what actually makes video calls stutter and games lag even on a “fast” line. Results are turned into plain verdicts for gaming, calls, and uploads, instead of a single number you have to interpret yourself.

How it measures

Test traffic runs entirely on Cloudflare’s global network of 300+ locations, not on the server hosting this site. That means the bytes travel a short hop to whichever edge is closest to you, so the result reflects your own line rather than the distance to a single, distant data center. The app itself (this page, your history, share links) runs separately on Vercel — the two are deliberately split so that measuring your connection never depends on, or competes with, the app serving this page.

Methodology

Most speed tests publish a number without explaining how they got it. Here is exactly what netgauge does, in order:

• Idle latency is measured first, before any download or upload traffic exists — 20 lightweight pings, reduced to a median (so a single slow ping can’t skew the result) plus jitter, the average change between consecutive pings.
• Download and upload each run 6 parallel streams for 8 seconds, after discarding the first 2 seconds of traffic. That warm-up window exists because TCP ramps up gradually (“slow start”) and your OS/browser haven’t settled into steady state yet — measuring through it would understate your real speed. netgauge tracks byte counts on every chunk and interpolates the exact 2-second mark, rather than rounding to the nearest sample.
• Request size adapts to your connection. Each stream starts at 10 MB per request and doubles (up to 200 MB) whenever a request finishes faster than 3 seconds — this keeps a gigabit line from being bottlenecked by per-request overhead, without over-requesting on a slower one.
• Loaded latency — the number behind the bufferbloat grade — is pinged every 200 ms while download and upload are saturating your connection, on a separate request that runs concurrently with the throughput streams. netgauge takes the higher of the loaded-download and loaded-upload latency, subtracts your idle latency, and grades the difference. See what bufferbloat is and why it matters for the full explanation.

This is the same measurement approach used to compute the per-use-case verdicts (streaming, calls, gaming, uploads) shown with every result — they read directly off these numbers, not a separate heuristic.

What we do with results

Your test history lives only in your browser. If you choose to save and share a result, it’s stored without your raw IP address — see the Privacy Policy for the full details on what’s stored and what isn’t.

Embed netgauge on your site

Drop this speed test on your own page — the test traffic runs on Cloudflare’s edge, so embedding it costs your site nothing.

<iframe
  src="https://netgauge.zeeshanai.cloud/embed"
  width="100%"
  height="720"
  style="border:0"
  title="netgauge speed test"
></iframe>

Who built this

netgauge is built and maintained by Zeeshan Altaf. Found a bug or have an idea? Get in touch.