Digital Home Thoughts: How Fast Does YouTube Say Your Internet Speed Is?

I'm not entirely sure how I ended up finding this page on YouTube's site, but I'm always interested in seeing real-world bandwidth tests, and YouTube probably burns up more bandwidth than any other domain on the planet, so they have some rich data from which to draw upon. Make sure you're logged into YouTube, then check out their historical speed page. The above screenshot shows that I consume YouTube videos at 11.98Mbps average speed; I was surprised to see that the average Canadian rating, and the global rating, were so low.

The speed comparison over time was quite interesting - look at how the measurement spikes then drops downward severely. Quite curious. How does your YouTube historical access speed rate?

And if you're interested in some real-time data, YouTube has a test video at the bottom of their speed page that will show you real-time streaming information. Pretty cool!