Internet bandwidth is, in simple terms, the transmission speed or throughput of your connection
to the Internet. However, measuring bandwidth can be tricky, since the lowest bandwidth point
between your computer and the site you're looking at determines the effective transmission speed
at any moment.
Three factors outside of your computer control how quickly you can load web pages:
- The Internet bandwidth between your computer and the site you're viewing.
- The round-trip time between your computer and the site you're viewing.
- The response time of the site you're viewing.
A limitation of this speed test is that is only measures download speed. This means it will only calculate how fast you can receive data. For most applications this is the most relevant figure. When browsing the web or watching streaming audio or video, your download bandwidth is what matters.
The second and third factor are what makes browsing seem slow some days and lightning fast on others. Between your computer and the site you're viewing there is a lot of network equipment. If there are a lot of other people browsing sites on the same network route as the one you are, there may be contention for the available bandwidth, and the data destined for your computer may have to wait in line while other data gets processed first.