\n<\/p>\n
Internet speed tests aren’t just for people who obsess over their internet speeds<\/span><\/span>. When my friends or parents are experiencing an inevitable home internet slowdown, I recommend always starting with a speed test. I’ve tested and used dozens of internet speed tests<\/span><\/span>. The market is pretty saturated with them. Ideally, the best internet speed test diagnoses your bandwidth blues<\/span><\/span> as simply as possible — no ads, no extra features you can’t make sense of, and no slowing down your Wi-Fi.<\/p>\n Speed tests are nothing new in the home internet space, but then again, I’ve never used a speed test quite like Orb before.<\/p>\n The creators of the industry\u2019s most popular speed test, Ookla, rolled out Orb at the end of April. (Disclaimer: Ookla is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.) While I was skeptical about what value Orb could bring to the internet speed testing market, I felt differently after I downloaded the app to my iPhone and personal computer for a few weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n Orb is a free, sophisticated speed testing application. It doesn\u2019t just test your download and upload speeds; it measures the overall health of your home network holistically, using multiple metrics and continuous speed tests without slowing down your Wi-Fi.<\/p>\n Orb co-founder and CEO Doug Suttles says Orb isn\u2019t really a speed test at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not a speed test, that\u2019s the best way to put it,\u201d Suttles told me. \u201cWe have speed testing functionality, but we focus far more on what we call responsiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Orb uses a few different metrics to measure responsiveness. You can see what your best (and worst) lag times look like.<\/p>\n <\/span> Screenshot by Cierra Nofke\/CNET<\/span><\/p>\n Responsiveness — which includes measurements like lag<\/span><\/span>, latency, jitter and packet loss — is the main metric Orb uses to “grade” your internet connection out of 100. Reliability, or the network\u2019s responsiveness over time, and speed are secondary measures that Orb takes into account.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a different side of broadband that we\u2019re focusing on,\u201d Suttles said. \u201cThe things that we built at our past company were perfect for the time when we built them, when broadband was in its infancy, and you needed to measure throughput first and foremost.\u201d<\/p>\n With data use surging and internet speeds soaring<\/span><\/span>, our lives are more connected than ever — but speed, or throughput, alone is no longer the only factor in determining a good internet plan.<\/p>\n I see this often while reviewing home internet plans: While most internet shoppers mainly focus on speed and cost, plenty of other factors, beyond advertised max speeds, determine whether a connection is reliable or consistent.<\/p>\n Jamie Steven, president and co-founder of Orb, said a reliable internet connection, not just a fast one, is vital for his rurally located home.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe connection would go down all the time,\u201d Steven told me, \u201cSpeed wasn\u2019t always or very often was not the issue. The issue was reliability and responsiveness.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Suttles and Steven say that standard internet speed tests are akin to measuring a car’s top speed. Instead of focusing solely on speeds, Orb focuses on whether your internet stalls or how quickly it can accelerate.\u00a0Additionally, Steven notes that the top speed of most cars is impractical for everyday use.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not what you\u2019re doing day-to-day,\u201d said Steven, referring to max internet speeds. \u201cFor us, it was more about continuous measurement of your internet experience.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Orb measures your internet’s current speeds as well as its peak speeds.<\/p>\n <\/span> Screenshot by Cierra Nofke\/CNET<\/span><\/p>\n Part of Orb\u2019s ingenuity is its ability to run those continuous speed tests, instead of only running speed tests when you\u2019re experiencing delays or interruptions. My first thought was that such an approach would strain your network’s bandwidth. But Suttles assured me that Orb uses a much smaller payload (around 10MB) compared to popular speed test alternatives. For rural internet users like Steven, that lighter payload makes all the difference in keeping his internet connection stable.<\/p>\n If you\u2019d like to give your internet a stress test, Orb does come with a \u201cpeak speed\u201d function to test your network’s capacity, which uses a much heavier payload, but that\u2019s not a continuous test.<\/p>\n Every device you connect to your internet acts as an “orb” or “sensor” that tests your internet connection from whatever room in your house or apartment they’re in. You can also set up a dedicated device to continuously monitor your network, 24\/7.<\/p>\n There is one downside to Orb as it compares to other speed tests: You can\u2019t run the tests in a browser. You\u2019ll have to download the application to a device (which could be anything from a spare smartphone to a Raspberry Pi). Once you create an account, you can basically download Orb to anything with a hard drive — and easily diagnose your internet issues in different rooms, simultaneously.<\/p>\n Screenshot by Cierra Nofke\/CNET<\/span><\/p>\n Orb is completely free and easy to use. I installed it on my phone and personal computer and used it to test my fiber internet connection. Using a scale of 0 to 100, Orb gives your internet a grade that\u2019s pretty easy to understand: Red (0 to 49) means poor performance and green (90 to 100) means your internet is performing excellently. My internet connection gets a solid 90 most of the time — not bad for AT&T\u2019s cheapest speed tier<\/span><\/span>.\u00a0<\/p>\n “We want consumers to use this because these are problems that all of us on the founding team have had at home,\u201d Steven said. \u201cWe want this to be free forever.”<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s more value in building a brand than in trying to monetize consumers for something that, quite frankly, we\u2019re so passionate about, we just want to give it away anyway,\u201d said Suttles.<\/p>\n I used Orb to test the internet connection in my office and the speeds I was getting in the living room where my TV is. Both tests showed results typically consistent with what I\u2019d see using Ookla.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You can add as many devices to your Orb network as you’d like; they’ll all play a role in measuring your internet connectivity.<\/p>\n <\/span> Screenshot by Cierra Nofke\/CNET<\/span><\/p>\n Orb is still in its beginning stages — while it\u2019s an effective tool for understanding how your internet connection works, there are a few features coming to the app that will make it even more user-friendly, like the ability to access historical data (similar to Ookla).<\/p>\n \u201cOrb does record all data locally first,\u201d Steven noted. \u201cWe just hadn\u2019t presented it in the UI, but that was something we were very passionate about. We didn\u2019t want to require cloud connectivity to be able to see the past.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Perhaps most importantly, Orb will eventually start releasing recipes for measuring the connectivity of specific applications or services, like Microsoft Teams or Slack and, eventually, even specific internet services.<\/p>\n \u201cDifferent web services use different sorts of protocols,\u201d Steven said. \u201cSo Zoom might use this special RTSP protocol — can my connection open that port to that service? Is it accessible? What\u2019s its responsiveness?\u201d<\/p>\n Down the road, Suttles and Steven would like to see Orb used by the community to create different \u201crecipes\u201d and ways of measuring reachability.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAt its core, Orb is really a recipe engine,\u201d said Suttles. \u201cOur vision is to release and share new recipes, then have the community start creating them.\u201d<\/p>\n The internet isn\u2019t getting any cheaper<\/span><\/span>, and while it might be tempting to just buy more speed, there are simpler ways of diagnosing and boosting your connection first. While Orb (and the internet) continue to evolve, it\u2019s a good idea to have a holistic sense of your network\u2019s connectivity, beyond speed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Internet speed tests aren’t just for people who obsess over their internet speeds. When my friends or parents are experiencing an inevitable home internet slowdown, I recommend always starting with a speed test. I’ve tested and used dozens of internet speed tests. The market is pretty saturated with them. Ideally, the best internet speed test<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[1145,859,5632,2244,76],"class_list":{"0":"post-12072","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-internet","9":"tag-ive","10":"tag-orb","11":"tag-speed","12":"tag-test"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Meet Orb<\/h2>\n
What does Orb track?<\/h2>\n
How does Orb work?<\/h2>\n
Hands-on with Orb<\/h2>\n
Final thoughts<\/h2>\n