Test Targets

To gauge the quality of a user's broadband connection, our Device Agents need to measure network performance from a device, e.g., a router in a user's home or office, to a target on the internet, and vice versa. Customers can deploy their own test servers within their network for use as test targets, which are called “on-net” test servers.

We also maintain a variety of high-capacity test servers across the globe as “off-net” test servers. When a test is initiated to an off-net test server, our backend provides a list of candidate test servers to the Device Agent, and the Device Agent determines the best server to use via a short latency check to each.

No measurement data is stored on the test servers (on-net and off-net), only the Device Agent; the servers simply act as endpoints to generate and receive traffic.

Find out more about our server methodology.

Real applications and content providers

Device Agents also perform measurements against real applications and content providers. These include services for video streaming, gaming, CDNs, websites, social media, voice over IP and video conferencing services. See Tests for more information about these test types.