Internet Stability Checker
A speed test takes a snapshot. This watches your connection for several minutes, pinging our server every second, to catch the lag spikes, jitter and short dropouts that ruin games and calls but never show up in a speed test.
- Ping every second
- Gaming and call verdicts
- Spots Starlink and Wi-Fi patterns
Your connection
- IP address
- 216.73.216.145
- Provider
- Amazon.com, Inc. AS16509
- Testing from
- United States to our server in the UK
Choosing your connection type tailors the advice to it.
Run the check
300 pings over 5 minutes.
Use your connection as you normally would, or leave it quiet to see its best. You can switch tabs; on a phone, keep the screen on (we'll ask it to stay awake). Don't run a speed test at the same time.
Live
Ready
Is it good enough for…
Judged on steadiness as well as speed of response. Your ping to a game or call server elsewhere will differ from your ping to us, but jitter, spikes and dropouts usually come from your own connection, so they carry over.
What we found
How your pings were spread
A stable connection has almost everything in one or two rows.
The numbers
Minute by minute
| Minute | Typical | 95% under | Worst | Jitter | Lost | Spikes |
|---|
Your checks
| # | Time | Length | Typical | Jitter | Lost | Spikes | Score |
|---|
What the numbers mean
- Ping: how long a tiny message takes to reach our server and come back. Lower feels snappier.
- Jitter: how much ping changes from one moment to the next. Games and calls hate it more than a slightly higher ping.
- Lag spikes: single pings well above your typical ping: the "rubber-banding" moments in a game or a word lost in a call.
- Lost pings and dropouts: pings that never came back within 3 seconds. Several in a row is a dropout.
Typical results by connection
- Full fibre: 5 to 15 ms to us, jitter under 2 ms, nothing lost.
- VDSL and cable: 10 to 30 ms, jitter under 5 ms. Cable can wobble at busy evening times.
- 4G / 5G: 25 to 70 ms, jitter 5 to 20 ms, with the odd spike or lost ping.
- Starlink: 25 to 60 ms, spikes every 15 seconds as satellites hand over, and short dropouts if the dish's view is blocked.
How is this different from a speed test?
A speed test measures how much data your line can move for a few seconds. Stability is about consistency over time. A 900 Mbps line can still drop out every few minutes or spike to 300 ms, and that's what spoils online games and video calls. Run our True Speed & Lag Test too, to see how lag behaves when the line is busy.
Why measure for minutes rather than seconds?
Many problems are periodic: Starlink hands over between satellites every 15 seconds, Wi-Fi adapters scan for networks every minute or so, mobile connections switch cells, and a VDSL line with noise can lose sync for a moment. A few seconds of testing usually misses them.
Should I test on Wi-Fi or with a cable?
Both, if you can. Testing with a network cable shows your internet connection itself. Testing on Wi-Fi from where you actually game or take calls shows what you really get. If the cable result is much better, the problem is your Wi-Fi rather than your provider.
Does it use much data?
Almost none: each ping is a few hundred bytes, so even ten minutes at four pings a second is under 2 MB. It's fine on mobile data.
What about real packet loss?
A web page can't send raw network packets, so these pings travel over a normal secure web connection, which resends anything lost. Real packet loss therefore shows up mostly as lag spikes, while lost pings mean the connection stalled for 3 seconds or more. Either way, both hurt games and calls.