Speed testing over wireless may not be accurate and may result in slower speeds than you are paying for. Speeds to devices are often lower than your full connection speed due to WiFi limitations and device capabilities. Depending on the type of wireless network you connect to, you may see various speed test results.

Speed tests show you Internet speeds to the device you're using to run the speed test which can be quite different from the full speed you get to your house. Typically, speed test results on a device connected via WiFi are much slower due to the limitations of wireless technology. In most cases that's fine since your smartphone doesn't need a full gigabit, for instance.

In most cases, the best and most accurate way to test your home's full connection is to use a computer connected via network (Ethernet) cable. No other current technology is capable of reaching gigabit speeds and higher.

Many things may affect your speed test results:

• viruses/spyware/adware
• different browsers
• applications running on your computer
• having multiple devices connected to your home network
• the quality of your Ethernet cables
• your router
• the time of day (Peak internet hours range from 6pm to 11pm.)

It depends. Before we answer that, we have to answer the following questions:

• How many devices are connected to the Internet?
• Do you work from home? If so, do you use video conferencing?
• Does anyone in your home game online?

If you have a 250Mb connection, your connection may support all of the uses above. However, if you have more than 15 devices connecting simultaneously or are experiencing issues like buffering or call dropping then it may be time to upgrade to a 1Gb connection.

The total usage of your connection is a sum of what all the devices in your house are using at any given moment. If someone is downloading a large file while multiple TVs are streaming shows the video game you're playing might feel laggy.

In a nutshell, the closer your device gets to your WiFi router the better your signal and the faster your Internet connection. Typically, you can see the quality of your connection on your device as bars on the WiFi icon. For this reason, we strongly recommend you place your WiFi router in a central location of your home and/or set up a mesh with multiple WiFi access points.

We rely on WIFI for our Internet more these days but might not always upgrade our router when we upgrade the Internet speed to our house. This can make older routers a bottleneck. Fortunately, as connection speeds increase so does the speed newer routers can handle. XMission can recommend a new router you can purchase or perhaps lease you one.

Different devices can handle different Internet speeds. As a rule of thumb, the newer and/or more expensive the device, the faster speeds it can handle. Depending on what you use the device for, the speeds it can provide might be just fine.

Even the best routers will not last forever. You may want to consider replacing your router if:

• your router is more than a few years old
• you recently upgraded your speed from a 250Mb connection to a 1Gb connection
• your router does not support the newest wireless technology

Check out our Recommended Routers documentation for more info.

As TVs and streaming services continue to provide higher picture quality, more bandwidth is needed to support that quality. For instance HD TV typically needs 5Mbps whereas 4K requires 25Mbps! As a result, we strongly encourage customers to run a networking connection to any 4K TVs they have in their homes. Our technical support team can advise you on networking options.