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Netflix Launches Fast.com, New Tool To Check Your Internet Speed

Shelby Carpenter
This article is more than 4 years old.

Netflix is all about optimization these days. Just weeks ago, the company introduced new tools to help you measure how much cellular data you use. Now, it wants you to help you get a handle on the speed of your web connection too: with its new website fast.com, you can immediately test your home Internet speed, and make sure your web connection is up to snuff for watching all your Netflix streaming favorites.

"We all want a faster, better Internet, yet Internet speeds vary greatly and can be affected by other users on your network or congestion with your Internet service provider," Netflix's David Fullagar, vice president of content delivery architecture, said in a blog post about the new site. "When you’re experiencing streaming issues, fast.com allows you to check the download speeds you’re getting from your Internet service provider."

As a site, Fast.com pretty basic. You just go to the URL, and immediately it measures the speed of your connection. It has a simple, white background, and there aren't any ads--just a small "Powered by Netflix" logo at the bottom.

Fullagar said fast.com works similarly to other available tools like Speedtest.net, which measures download speed, upload speed, and the time it takes for messages to get back and forth between client and server. It will let you measure your Internet speed on both broadband and mobile connections. In general, Netflix recommends a speed of 3.0 Mbps for SD video and 5.0 Mbps for HD. The company also maintains an ISP Speed Index, which ranks the performance of different ISPs.

And conveniently, one of the main benefits of fast.com is that it can help you figure out who's the culprit behind that slow, buffering video you want to watch: Netflix or your ISP. And based on this new tool, Netflix seems to be betting it will usually be the latter.

I’m a producer on the Forbes technology channel, where I write about digital media and video streaming, among other things. I’m a graduate of the Berkeley J-School and…

I’m a producer on the Forbes technology channel, where I write about digital media and video streaming, among other things. I’m a graduate of the Berkeley J-School and also hold an undergraduate degree in the Humanities and Japanese from Washington University in St. Louis. My work has appeared in Outside, WIRED.com, and Backpacker, among others. Before becoming a journalist, I worked as a law clerk and a mountain guide in Alaska.