In an attempt to gather more information about actual Internet speeds experienced by its customers, Reliance Jio has placed 14 servers on Ookla’s bandwidth testing service.
With this, Jio users can test their speed using either the Ookla app, or speedtest.net website.
The move has come in the wake of criticism that many of its users are finding their Internet bandwidth to be very low.
Ookla, which runs the speedtest.net website, is the world’s biggest broadband quality monitoring website and accounts for most of the tests conducted by users to check their broadband speed.
However, the system suffers from two problems stemming from its dependency on third-party servers.
The testing servers are hosted by companies such as Vodafone, Airtel and cable ISPs. Some IT firms, such as hosting and network technology companies also contribute servers.
However, when a Jio user tries to find out his bandwidth using these mirrors, he or she often fails to get the true picture for two reasons.
One – the servers in India are usually overloaded, and even if the user has a bandwidth of 30 Mbps at his end, if the server can only spare 2 Mbps, then the user will see that his speed is 2 Mbps. Ever since Jio started giving its free 4G service, most of the servers are running at their full capacity, which restricts the speed that you can see.
Two – the bandwidth that you can see on the test is determined by the speed of interconnection between Jio and the network on which that server resides. In other words, if the testing server is on Vodafone’s network, then Jio’s traffic must first cross over into Vodafone’s network to reach the server.
For this reason, testing on a server that is situated at the other end of the country often gives only a fraction of the result that using a facility closer to the user’s location gives. The more the number of networks involved, the lower the speed.
By placing its own servers on Ookla’s network, Jio will have two advantages. First, it will avoid the network-hopping delays, as it will be carrying the data right from the users’ terminal all the way to the test server.
Secondly, it can ensure that its servers are not overloaded and can give the user a true picture of his or her 4G speed, without being affected by extraneous factors such as server load, interconnection points and so on.
Finally, doing this also helps generate valuable information for the company about actual customer experience and helps it identify congestion points.
At present, RJio’s servers on Speedtest service have been placed in the following locations: Ludhiana, Lucknow, Jaipur, Bhopal, Kolkata, Guwahati, Navi Mumbai, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Shimla, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai and Kochi. If you are unable to find them using the flash website, try using the html5 version of the website or the mobile app, both of which give you the option of searching for your provider.