How to detect internet speed in JavaScript?

Question

How can I create a JavaScript page that will detect the user’s internet speed and show it on the page? Something like “your internet speed is ??/?? Kb/s”.

Answer 1

It's better to use images for testing the speed. But if you have to deal with zip files, the below code works.

var fileURL = "your/url/here/testfile.zip";

var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
var avoidCache = "?avoidcache=" + (new Date()).getTime();;
request.open('GET', fileURL + avoidCache, true);
request.responseType = "application/zip";
var startTime = (new Date()).getTime();
var endTime = startTime;
request.onreadystatechange = function () {
    if (request.readyState == 2)
    {
        //ready state 2 is when the request is sent
        startTime = (new Date().getTime());
    }
    if (request.readyState == 4)
    {
        endTime = (new Date()).getTime();
        var downloadSize = request.responseText.length;
        var time = (endTime - startTime) / 1000;
        var sizeInBits = downloadSize * 8;
        var speed = ((sizeInBits / time) / (1024 * 1024)).toFixed(2);
        console.log(downloadSize, time, speed);
    }
}

request.send();

This will not work very well with files < 10MB. You will have to run aggregated results on multiple download attempts.