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Comment by ssalka | Hacker News Reader

why are there multiple versions of anything? people can choose the one they like, and all are different somehow.

I personally prefer fast.com because it's quick to type in and typically I'm only looking for download speed, but the real-time graph on this one here is pretty cool

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There are ISPs out there that give priority and optimized the speed to Ookla Speedtest whenever the browsers connected to it. This causes skewed results believing that we are getting the speed we paid for when it is not in reality. In a way, it would do "unlimited speed" the maximum it can go just for this test.

Netflix Fast are connected to multiple Netflix CDNs throughout regions. They will get a realistic speed meter and difficult for ISPs to fake it.

Cloudflare is more representative of the general speed. Fast gives me 300Mbps (what my ISP "promises") while cloudflare's give me 75Mbps

Fast give me 300Mbps. I haven't tried out Cloudflare speedtest until now, it give me 335Mbps. My internet package is 300Mbps, so it is consistent with the speed that I get from my ISP.

Fast can also measure some more connection metadata if you click "show more info". A bit annoying it requires the extra step to start measuring ping and upload speed, but it is there.

Fast shows you how fast your ISP WAN is, as the speed test goes to your local (ISP) Netflix cache. I like speed tests that go outside the ISP to get an idea of bandwidth to the internet

> why are there multiple versions of anything?

Usually, because they're better in different ways. So it seems helpful to ask what this one is good at.

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