U.S.-based streaming giant Netflix has operated its own proprietary internet speed test website, Fast.com, since 2016.
The service previously only measured network download speeds, but the website has now been updated to include network latency and network upload speed measurements.
According to a July 17th, 2018 Netflix media release attributed to senior software engineer Sergey Federov, Fast.com will also provide both unloaded and loaded latency measurements.
Unloaded latency refers to the time it takes for a transmission to travel from a device to a server when only a single user is on the network.
Loaded latency refers to the time it takes for transmissions to propagate when multiple users are accessing the same network.
“Ideally, those two values for unloaded and loaded latency should be close to each other,” said Federov.
“If not, that might explain your poor experience with latency sensitive applications (like gaming, video calls or web surfing) under heavy network usage, and you may want to check your home network setup (bufferbloat.net has useful recommendations) or consult with your ISP.”
According to Netflix, Fast.com has generated approximately 500 million speed tests since the service launched in 2016.
Source: Netflix
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