Today i received this beauty, the Ookla Speedtest Pulse. I did some testing with it to see what kind of feedback I get out of it. SPOILER ALERT : i am very surprised with all the details and measurements the Speedtest Pulse is providing.
First it came in a nice small box, very easy to take it with you onsite in a backpack.
To start using the Speedtest Pulse you need to connect it to your mobile device with a USB-C cable which is included in the box. It has this cute Speedtest logo on the USB-C cable, it’s all in the details.
Once the Speedtest Pulse is connected to your mobile device you will need to install the app “Speedtest Pulse by Ookla” from the App Store.
To start using the Speedtest Pulse you need open the app on your mobile device and power the Pulse with a small button in between the ethernet connection and the USB-C connection. Pressing the button 2sec does the trick, now it’s alive 🙂
If you open the app on your mobile device you will see a black screen with a blue button in the middle to start your first Speedtest Pulse measurement. Just below it you will see the wireless network your mobile device is connected with, in my case the company network AHFIBIT.
However before we start doing our first measurement, we want to check the software version and the serial number of the device. We can do this by clicking on the green logo on the top right corner of the app. In my case I had an update available, from the App you can easily update the Pulse. When the firmware is updated to the latest version you can go back to the main screen and now go for the first test drive.
The first test I did was a test sitting my desk, by clicking the GO button on the main screen the first test will start. It will provide you a job ID, the SSID you are connected with and also the BSSID of the wireless network and the access point your are connected with. Once the test is running, we wait and let the Pulse gather all related data
From the moment the Pulse has done gathering data it will show the results on screen. The main screen will show us the Speedtest results, Wi-Fi quality Analysis, KPI’s, Overall score on the test location and at the bottom recommendations.
Speedtest Analysis
On the main screen we can see the default results that we may recognize from the regular Speedtest application. If you press on the Speedtest results you will get to see more detail on the test that was done. Information like packet loss, latency and jitter is being gathered during the measurement next to the default download and upload speed.
Latency measures the round-trip time of data in milliseconds with latency “Idle” to establish a baseline for the responsiveness of the connection. The Download and Upload in latency measure this same path but now under load to identify “bufferbloat” or a delay caused by excessive queuing by network hardware.
Jitter is the measurement of variability of latency over time in milliseconds. Certainly with realtime communications we don’t want too much difference in between the packets. Below this is also the network IP or more specific, the public IP that you have been using while running the test.
Wi-Fi Quality Analysis
The Wi-Fi Quality Analysis part of the main screen will show you the signal strength you had when running the measurement. Also the number radios you could hear on this channel mentioned as channel interference and the channel width used for the measurement. In my case I didn’t have secondary signal strength at my desk, oops :s
KPI & Overall score
The next section is giving us an overview of the KPI’s for this measurement. As a result of this measurement I have with 2 average and 2 poor KPI’s but 17 good ones. By clicking on KPI’s, you will see what measurements are good – average – poor.
As you can see, the Speedtest Pulse app is testing a lot KPI’s in comparison than a regular speedtest measurement does. The one thing that is unclear to me at the moment of writing is that the KPI for PMF says it is required, since the connection is WPA3 SAE PMF has to be enabled.
Just as a double-check i opened Wi-Fi Explorer Pro to validate if PMF or Management Frame Protection is enabled on the SSID which is the case.
Another thing i wanted to test is roaming, in the Configuration section of the KPI’s i noticed the last KPI ‘Roaming event during the test = No” So what if i am walking around while doing the Speedtest Pulse measurement. I did the test while roaming in the house, with the lack of secondary coverage i could already assume the roaming and connection quality would degrade quiclkly.
As the results below show you, latency was bad and packet loss increased. From the configuration overview i could see i captured a roaming event during the test, it didn’t tell me what kind of roaming event it was but i switched BSSID. For the environment section you can now clearly see the secondary signal strength was very poor with -90dBm
All the KPI’s gathered during the measurement will be used to create a score. Overall I get 80/100 for this measurement. The score is split up in 5 different sections, each section will use some KPI’s. NOTE : the KPI’s below belong to another measurement
- Speed & Quality
- Broadband & WAN
- Configuration & Security
- RF environment
- Client devices
Recommendation & Sharing
If we go back to the main screen, we can either look into recommendation to improve connection quality or we can start a new measurement on the next location. At the bottom we have the option to share the report in PDF or CSV format.
In the PDF report you will see all the results coming from the main screen but also the threshold values. Now you have a better understanding how KPI’s are qualified by the Speedtest Pulse app.
Overall i like the first tests i did with the Speedtest Pulse app and the Active Pulse by Ookla. More testing to be done to show how the application is responding to less secure networks, to networks that do have better or worse channel planning.
