There are a number of services that are available for free to test your Internet connection speed. There are websites powered by HTML5 and were previously powered by Adobe Flash; there are standalone applications for various platforms as well as browser extensions that would help you achieve the same results. However, a user is advised to stick to a client whose more servers are penetrated across their geographical region to get the best results. Hence, various services like Fast by Netflix and Speed Test by Ookla are advised to be used. However, web browsers like Google Chrome, that are powered by Chromium come with an inbuilt API called the NetworkInformation API that will help you find relevant information about your network.
Check Internet Connection Speed using Chrome
To find your network connection statistics using Google Chrome, we will cover two methods-
- With Chrome Dev Tools.
- With Network Information API Sample hosted on GitHub.
1] With Chrome Dev Tools
Make sure that you are running Google Chrome v65 or later. Select the menu button denoted by three vertical dots on the top right corner of the Google Chrome window. And then click on About.
Once verified, start by navigating to any web page on Google Chrome and hit the F12 button on your keyboard.
Under the tab named as Console, type in the following and hit Enter-
navigator.connection
You will see the output in the same console window as sh9wn in the image above.
Here, the value of the downlink denotes the actual download speed of your computer in Mbps.
Values like rtt denote the Ping, effective type denotes the connection type based on the download speed that you have achieved.
2] With Network Information API Sample hosted on GitHub
The developers for Chromium have hosted a page on GitHub with a sample for the network information API.
Just as soon as you visit the link here, you will get the same results on a page with Live Connection output.
Thus you can now check your connection speed without relying on any third party services.
If you are interested, you can also read our post on Free HTML5 Bandwidth testing sites that don’t need Flash.
Do you like this new method of testing your Internet connection speed?