Our Test Access Points

A cartoon of a blue square looking under the hood of a Whitebox

We have three means by which to test your internet performance: the Whitebox, our mobile SDKs (software development kits), used for various government apps, and our web-browser speed test.

We most commonly test your internet performance by asking you to install a Whitebox, which has all of our proprietary measurements tucked away inside. It acts as an Ethernet bridge and reports on a range of key metrics such as download speed, upload speed, latency, and packet loss. This hardware-based approach is what gives our measurements unrivalled accuracy because the Whitebox is unaffected by other factors within the home, like your computer.

Our internet performance tests run independently of your internet usage. So when you're not using the internet, or are using the internet below a minimum threshold, the Whitebox can perform scheduled tests that record how long and what journey your data takes to reach our network of test servers and back again.

Our iOS and Android SDKs measure mobile broadband performance and the measurements have been built to the same specification as those used in our Whiteboxes. These tests run in the background when you're not using your phone. You can also check your data in real-time, as well as your historical results.

Our web-based application also includes the same metrics as the Whitebox and mobile SDK, but it’s designed to run in a web browser on your computer. Unlike other web-based speed tests, our web-based test uses pure HTML5 and therefore does not rely on Java or Flash. This allows it to operate in all modern desktop and mobile browsers, as well as many embedded browsers (e.g., in set-top boxes or TVs).