Optus Mobile Review ALDI Mobile Review Amaysim Mobile Review Belong Mobile Review Circles.Life Review Vodafone Mobile Review Woolworths Mobile Review Felix Mobile Review Best iPhone Plans Best Family Mobile Plans Best Budget Smartphones Best Prepaid Plans Best SIM-Only Plans Best Plans For Kids And Teens Best Cheap Mobile Plans Telstra vs Optus Mobile Optus NBN Review Belong NBN Review Vodafone NBN Review Superloop NBN Review Aussie BB NBN Review iiNet NBN Review MyRepublic NBN Review TPG NBN Review Best NBN Satellite Plans Best NBN Alternatives Best NBN Providers Best Home Wireless Plans What is a Good NBN Speed? Test NBN Speed How to speed up your internet Optus vs Telstra Broadband ExpressVPN Review CyberGhost VPN Review NordVPN Review PureVPN Review Norton Secure VPN Review IPVanish VPN Review Windscribe VPN Review Hotspot Shield VPN Review Best cheap VPN services Best VPN for streaming Best VPNs for gaming What is a VPN? VPNs for ad-blocking Running an NBN speed test to check your NBN internet speed couldn’t be simpler. Simply make sure you’re connected to the internet via your home NBN WiFi modem with the device you plan to test on and hit the big “Start Speed Test” button at the top of this page. If you are testing from your smartphone and you’re not connected to WiFi, the speed test will return results from your mobile network (also handy to know). Allow around ten seconds for the internet speed test to run. Once complete, you’ll be given your download speed result, and if you click more info, you can find your ping/latency and upload speeds. See, we told you an NBN speed test was easy. While ping and latency are important to some users, download and upload speed are the two most important data points in your NBN speed test (they are, after all, what you usually pay extra for). First up, it’ll send a request to a server and wait for a response. The time between making the request and getting a response (in milliseconds) is what we call ‘ping’. Ping won’t be a major consideration for most everyday internet users, but if you’re keen to learn more, check out the ping and latency section below. Second, and most importantly, the test will measure your download and upload speeds. This works by the test tool opening multiple connections to the test server and downloading small bits of data. While this is happening, the tool will measure how quickly it downloaded that bit of data and how much of your network’s resources were used in the process. Using this information, it will then optimise the size of that bit of data and the number of connections to accurately measure download speed. Testing upload is essentially the same thing, but instead of requesting data, you’re the one sending those bits of data to the test server. Using the same method, the tool establishes the right number of connections and the right data size to accurately measure your upload speed.
Basic I NBN 12: Potential 12 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload Basic II NBN 25: Potential 25 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload Standard NBN 50: Potential 50 Mbps and 20 Mbps upload Fast NBN 100/20: Potential 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload Fast NBN 100/40: Potential 100 Mbps download and 40 Mbps upload Superfast NBN 250 (available in eligible areas): Potential 250 Mbps download and 25 Mbps upload Ultrafast NBN 1000 (available in eligible areas): Potential 1000 Mbps download and 50 Mbps upload
These are the potential speeds for every tier but each provider also self-reports the typical evening speeds you can expect on their plans. For more information on what kind of speeds to expect, head over to our comprehensive guide to NBN speed tiers. For a rough guide on what kind of evening speeds you should be getting at each tier, run the test above and compare the results with the table below. If you can’t access your bills or online account management service, your next best course of action is to contact your internet provider’s support service. Most telcos offer online live chat, a dedicated phone number, forum or active social media. They’ll ask you for some basic details (like your name and address) and should be able to inform you of your chosen speed tier from there. Otherwise, there is one final option, although it’s not necessarily the most accurate way to check your NBN speed tier. By using the internet speed test at the top of this page, simply run a test and measure your result against the table above. You may be able to identify your NBN speed tier simply by seeing which one your result best fits into. To test the response time, the ping sends a packet of data to a specific IP address, waits for a signal to return and measures the milliseconds in-between. It’s near imperceptible in most cases so why should it matter? Well, it might not matter for you but for certain types of uses, like online gaming, a few milliseconds can make all the difference. If you’ve ever heard (or complained about) lag; that’s due to high ping on the connection. If you’re experiencing high ping, consider using a wired internet connection by running an ethernet cable to your computer rather than a WiFi connection. If that doesn’t help, there’s a long list of troubleshooting methods that can potentially improve the speed of your connection. If that doesn’t improve your download speed and ping, it might be time to consider switching providers. Given that the tech type associated with an address directly informs the speeds you should expect to see from a connection at that location, this should give you an idea of what an NBN internet connection at that location could offer. For example, an address with a FTTP NBN connection should be able to reach the high speeds offered by an NBN 1000 or NBN 250 connection, while an HFC NBN connection may not. If you need a reminder of what a good (or bad) connection looks like for each speed tier, check out this table. It’s also worth checking what applications you have running in the background. Constantly uploading and downloading items from the cloud (e.g. Dropbox and Google Drive) can drag down your internet speed considerably. If you find this is the case, you can adjust how much bandwidth your cloud storage uses. For Dropbox users, you’ll find bandwidth settings in ‘Preferences’, while Google Drive users can adjust their max download speed by clicking ‘Preferences’ then ‘Advanced’. If you’ve tried everything and ruled out all the above issues, it could be time to get a technician out to inspect your line. For more troubleshooting, visit our dedicated guide on how to speed up slow internet.
