Internet speed test technology has operated under the same basic principles since first being popularized over 20 years ago: a user decides to take a test, clicks a button, and a test runs. If the user is patient enough to wait over 30 seconds (an eternity by modern standards), they will receive basic details on their connectivity: downstream and upstream throughput, latency, and jitter. All the while, the test will have consumed hundreds of megabytes of data sending and receiving packets to a dedicated speed test server, with the ISP itself generally footing the hardware and maintenance bill to have the "privilege" of being a host.
As legacy speed testing technology is manually initiated by users, often in response to a perceived issue, a service upgrade, or validating a piece of new equipment, the tests are infrequent and miss key experience issues. Because this testing is reactive rather than proactive, the tests can be initiated after a user has experienced an intermittent issue, which may already be resolved at that point. In instances where speed testing is automated, tests are run infrequently (daily or hourly) due to the large amount of data consumed and strain it places on the network and equipment. Further, the very act of running a speed test negatively impacts the experience of other devices on that network.
That’s why we built Orb, to remedy these limitations by focusing on lightweight, continuous measurement of network experience that runs anywhere. Instead of consuming 1GB of data for a 30-second snapshot of your connectivity, Orb can use as little as 80MB per day to capture every interruption, blip, and outage your customers experience. Orb measures application experience to the most popular internet content providers, not best-case quality of service snapshots to servers inside of your network. Providers utilizing Orb are finding regional and individual-customer experience issues hours before the phone starts ringing in the call center. With Orb, you can go from being reactive to proactive. Orb even does speed tests, but smarter: cloud-based scheduling, turnkey deployment, advanced configuration, and remote calls and data access via Orb Cloud or our API out of the box.
Orb vs. Legacy Speed Tests
| Legacy speed testing | Orb |
|---|---|
| Point-in-time snapshots that miss intermittent issues entirely | Continuous measurement that catches every blip, interruption, and outage as it happens |
| Hundreds of megabytes consumed per test, even exceeding 1GB | As little as 80MB per day while measuring every second around the clock |
| Tests only to ISP-hosted servers inside your network | Measure real internet infrastructure — where your customers’ traffic actually goes |
| High CPU load degrades router and device performance | <2% CPU even on low-end embedded hardware |
| Running a test tanks the experience for every other device on the network | Lightweight, intelligent measurement |
| Easily manipulated by ISPs and equipment vendors incentivized to win awards | Fully encrypted end-to-end with no motive for manipulation |
| Want scheduling or remote triggering? Build it yourself | Scheduling, remote triggers, and APIs out of the box |
| Sporadic testing means issues are gone before you can prove them | Historical and real-time data lets you rewind to the exact moment of a complaint |
| Delivers raw data files — analysis is your problem | Dashboards, analytics, and APIs ready from day one |
| Cloud-only with no option for data sovereignty | Fully self-hostable — cloud, on-prem, or hybrid, your choice |
Meet with Orb at MWC
Want to learn more about how Orb can help with your journey from a reactive ISP to a proactive one? Meet with our team at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, March 2-5, 2026.