Internet speed test
Test your internet speed: download, upload, ping and jitter, measured against Cloudflare’s nearby servers. No app, no sign-up, about 20 seconds.
Ready
- Your ISP
- Anthropic, PBC (AS16509)
- Location
- Columbus, US
- Test server
- Cloudflare CMH
- Your IP
- 216.73.216.191
What is a good internet speed?
- Under 10 Mbps: fine for email, browsing and SD video for one person; struggles with several users.
- 10–25 Mbps: HD streaming and video calls for one or two people. Typical of entry-level fibre and good LTE.
- 25–100 Mbps: a family streaming, gaming and working from home at the same time.
- 100 Mbps and up: 4K on several screens, big game downloads in minutes, fast cloud backups.
Upload speed matters for video calls, sending large files and backups. Ping matters for gaming and calls: under 30 ms feels instant, 30–80 ms is fine, and over 100 ms causes noticeable lag.
Why results vary
Your result is the speed between this device and our server at this moment, not just your line speed. Wi-Fi is the biggest factor: test with a cable plugged into the router to see what your line can really do. Other devices streaming or updating share the bandwidth. Time of day matters, as networks are busiest between about 19:00 and 22:00. A VPN adds distance and overhead (check it with the VPN leak test). Older phones and laptops can also be the bottleneck on very fast fibre. Run the test two or three times and take the typical result.
Speed tests in South Africa
Most South African fibre is sold as a line speed by the fibre network (Openserve, Vumatel, Frogfoot, MetroFibre and others), with the internet service provided by your ISP, such as Afrihost, Cool Ideas or Webafrica. Fibre packages are usually symmetrical (same upload as download) or asymmetrical, such as 50/25 Mbps; check which you have before comparing. Mobile and fixed-LTE/5G speeds on Vodacom, MTN, Telkom, Cell C and Rain vary much more with signal strength, tower load and time of day, and those networks use CGNAT. Load-shedding can also affect towers and fibre equipment with flat backup batteries. Because Cloudflare has servers in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, local results reflect your local network rather than the long undersea route to Europe. See your provider’s details in our South African ISP guide.
How the test works
First we send a dozen tiny requests and time the round trip to get ping and jitter. Then several parallel connections download random, uncompressible data for about 8 seconds, growing the chunk size as your connection proves fast, so both slow mobile links and gigabit fibre are measured properly. The first moment is ignored while connections ramp up. Upload works the same way in reverse. Nothing is stored. Data used per test depends on your speed: roughly 10 MB on a slow line and several hundred MB on fast fibre.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good internet speed?
For one person browsing and streaming HD video, 10–25 Mbps download is enough. A household streaming 4K, gaming and video calling at once is comfortable on 50–100 Mbps or more. Upload matters for video calls and cloud backups: 10 Mbps or more is good. A ping under 30 ms feels instant; under 60 ms is fine for gaming.
Why is my speed test lower than what I pay for?
Wi-Fi is the most common cause: walls, distance and older routers can halve your speed. Other devices using the connection, VPNs, busy evening hours and an old laptop or phone also lower the result. Test with a network cable next to the router for the true line speed.
What is ping and jitter?
Ping (latency) is how long a tiny message takes to reach the test server and come back, in milliseconds. Jitter is how much that time varies from one message to the next. Low ping and low jitter matter most for gaming and video calls.
What is the difference between Mbps and MB/s?
Internet speeds are measured in megabits per second (Mbps). File downloads often show megabytes per second (MB/s). One byte is 8 bits, so 100 Mbps is about 12.5 MB/s.
Does this speed test use a lot of data?
Yes, a fast connection can use 100–500 MB per test, because the test downloads and uploads as much as it can for about 8 seconds each. On capped mobile data, run it sparingly.
Where is the FernTool speed test server?
Tests run against Cloudflare’s global network, which has data centres in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban as well as over 300 cities worldwide, so you are usually measured against a server close to you.
More network tools
Endpoints: GET /speed/down?bytes=N (max 100 MB) · POST /speed/up · GET /speed/ping. Results are measured in your browser.