

The modem is technically enough to get you online… but only if you plug in one device at a time with a physical ethernet wire. The devil is in the details here, as you need both a modem and and router to create WiFi. This is confusing for some customers, because the company prominently advertises “free modem” when promoting the plan. Here’s how that compares with the Spectrum standard plan:īoth the Ultra and basic Spectrum plans charge a $5 monthly WiFi router fee.


But if you’re not able to get a reduction on the bill, you’re stuck with the $99.99 price, which averages out to $85/month over two years as a customer (before any equipment fees). In some cases you can get the price reduced by calling and complaining to Spectrum, or by threatening to cancel. Everyone does it, from Comcast down to local companies like Sonic. That said, you will start to notice high ping if you're trying to make split-second decisions in an online multiplayer game, and it can also cause annoying delays during video call conversations.This is a nuisance, but is standard for cable companies. In most cases, ping differences are pretty minor, enough so that you won't notice them without running a speed test. Your ping might also rise slightly if you're connecting through something like a mesh router or a range extender, where your data needs to make multiple wireless jumps before reaching the modem. Ping will go up if you're connecting to a server that's very far away, or if there's some sort of interference somewhere in the connection. Think of it like a round-trip flight time for your internet connection. Simply put, the ping number is the time that it took for your device to send a signal to whatever distant server you connected to during the speed test, and then receive a response.
SPEEDTEST NET SPECTRUM DOWNLOAD
In addition to showing you the current upload and download speeds for whatever device you're running the test on, most internet speed tests will also give you a figure called ping, which is a latency measurement measured in milliseconds. That's not surprising, but it might make a slight impact on your results depending on the strength of your connection at the time of the test. You can even run the Ookla speed test on an Apple TV.Īll of that said, Ookla does display banner ads while you run basic speed tests. In addition to the website and the smartphone apps, Ookla also has apps that you can run on Windows or on Mac. Most recently, the service released a video-specific speed test that measures your network's ability to handle 4K video streams. Ookla's done a good job of keeping up with the times by adding new features and capabilities over the years. Incidentally, Ookla's speed test is also the one we use when we're testing Wi-Fi routers.
SPEEDTEST NET SPECTRUM ANDROID
Popularity aside, we like Ookla for having everything a basic user needs from a speed test: accuracy, the ability to view your speed test history (when you create an account), a wide array of servers to connect to, and even a handy app for speed testing from your Android or iOS device. One of our favorites is the Ookla speed test, which has a strong reputation for consistency and for being one of the first speed tests on the web.
