Does checking internet speed online, in anyway affects bandwidth?

[nevize]

I would want to know if in anyway, checking internet bandwidth online from sites like 'http://www.speedtest.net/' affects overall bandwidth.

As am being told to avoid checking speed online as it affects & chokes bandwidth.

[mudmanc4]

Testing any connection this way uses the allocated data. The data provided to your specific contract with the service provider.

 

After the test is over, it's over. Therefore no choking of the connection.

 

Now during the test procedure, it is recommended to eliminate all other sources of internal throughput, under normal tests.

[nevize]

For Example I'm being assigned with 2 MB bandwidth from the total bandwidth of i.e 30 MB. Checking only my system's (PC) bandwidth would not impact the rest of 30 MB in any way, Correct?  

[Sean]

If this advice was given for a mobile Internet connection, what they likely mean is that running speed tests gobbles up the available data allowance.

 

For example, many of the popular mobile phone packages in Ireland and the UK have a 1GB data allowance, such as the following example I picked from the UK O2 website:

 

Running a speed test on 4G typically uses up to 100MB per direction per test depending on the 4G speed.  For example, if one is getting around 50Mbps, TestMy will usually download about 60MB in total.  This is double for the uplink direction as TestMy first downloads each block size to run the upload test.  So for a typical 20Mbps uplink, it will use around 40MB in total.  For faster 4G areas such as 20MHz areas or LTE Advanced (or 4G+), these figures double or triple.  Speedtest.net uses a similar amount of data, around 100MB total for a 4G connection delivering about 50Mbps down and 20Mbps up and I'm sure it's much the same with other speed test providers. 

 

So assuming a speed test uses about 100MB per test (combined up & down) and the user has a 1GB monthly allowance like the above tariff, that person just needs to run the test 10 times to use up their data allowance without doing anything else online. 

 

Basically, for anyone with a 2GB or lower monthly data allowance on their mobile handset, run the speed tests sparingly on 3G and avoid running speed tests if at all possible on 4G, apart from on the last day of the billing cycle and you have at least 200MB left (500MB for an LTE Advanced / 4G+ area).

[nevize]

@Sean Thank You for explaining in details. Actually I had asked this question for office internet that is using a DSL connection which is shared among the office staff.

I was working on ROR scripting and somehow due to low bandwidth provided, my scripts were failing. So I asked the IT guy after checking my bandwidth, he said, don't check bandwidth online, it chokes & affects our overall bandwidth.

 

It was bit illogical statement for me as how can checking my PC's bandwidth affects the rest of the bandwidth?

Thanks.

Nevize