How Shark Speed Test actually measures your speed

A naive speed test downloads one file and divides bytes by seconds. That dramatically underestimates real-world throughput because TCP needs time to ramp up.

What we do instead

1. Parallel streams. We open multiple HTTP connections simultaneously to saturate the path, the same way YouTube or a Steam download would.
2. Sliding-window measurement. We sample throughput every 150 ms and report the steady-state rate, not the initial slow-start.
3. Edge-served endpoints. Our download/upload endpoints run on a globally distributed edge network, so you're measuring your link — not transit congestion to a single origin.
4. Latency separately. Ping is measured with eight tiny GET requests; we report the median and standard deviation (jitter), not the mean (which a single outlier ruins).

What we can't measure

We can't see inside your LAN. If your Wi-Fi is the bottleneck, we'll report your Wi-Fi speed, not your WAN speed. For an honest WAN reading, plug in.