Hi all,
As some of you may know, there is an official Stadia speed test used to determine if your connection is good enough to run Stadia before giving it a try: https://projectstream.google.com/speedtest
How it works:
This speed test is provided by m-labs, and like most speed tests, what it does is send data to your device and then have you send data back in order to understand how your network performs.
This sort of speed test technology can help measure a multitude of things, including:
The issue:
From what I have been able to tell, there are 2 issues with the current Stadia speed test, one of them is incredibly problematic and is the cause of daily posts by confused users on reddit, this site and other platforms:
For a bit of context, the issue with point 1 is that there are a TON of people out there with perfectly adequate speed but terrible ping and unreliable connections.
These people get a "Your connection is great" message from the speed test even though their connection may be absolutely terrible and completely unable to run Stadia whatsoever.
I see posts on r/Stadia at least once a week, if not closer to once a day these days I and suspect that for each post on social media there are half a dozen people who just give up and believe it's simply because Stadia is terrible for everyone.
The second point, though less important, can still lead to people having a great result in the speed test but terrible ping and/or network routing to the closest Stadia data center, which would again result in a false-positive.
The solution:
If you run a speed test over at m-labs you will clearly see that they measure more than just speed, so there is no excuse for the first point, and I am fairly certain it's down to someone at Stadia either modifying the code of the speed test page or getting on the phone with m-labs and getting them to change the parameters.
As for the second point, it could be a bit more complex since it would require a bespoke solution installed within each Stadia data center. But I'm pretty certain a simple "hey, we'll give you free servers for your speed tests if you use them exclusively for Stadia speed testing" would have m-labs or any other competitor acquiescing in an instant.
This is not rocket science, and is starting to become a major black spot on Stadia.
Someone please bring this to the attention of whoever is in charge of this side of the service. It's really overdue.
I'm not sure that Stadia speedtest only measures download speed, because I had several instance of where on mobile connection I got an ok download speed (20mbps enough for 1080p) but the speed test told me that the connection was not stable enough and I can't play with Stadia (directly by the google speedtest)
Also how you ruled out the possibility that the test is not executed from the correct datacenter? (the one later used for stadia)
My post is mostly based on the significant number of posts I have seen over on r/Stadia with people reporting excellent results in the speed test and then demonstrating that they have massive packet loss and/or ping when people from the community push them to try other speed test services.
It may very well be that this is simply an issue with the system that creates false positives in some cases, but the sheer number of times it has come up leads me to believe that it is highly unlikely.
As for the second point (of which I am not at all entirely confident, and will edit to reflect that better), I cannot find the original discussion, but I remember people were discussing this a while back (probably at least 8 months ago) and someone seemed to have found information that pointed to what I describe.
But yes, you are correct that this second point may not actually be an issue.
Great post. I often use the Stadia speed test and am not convinced it's accurate, but oftentimes, if I'm experiencing lag or stuttering while playing, I can almost guarantee that the Stadia speed test will show that I'm getting <5 MB/s. When Stadia gameplay is great, I almost always have >50 MB/s in the speed test.
That being said, do you think there's anything that can explain why I see different speeds in using the stadia speed test while performing at the same location (with a different internet connection)?
Scenario A:
- Mobile Data Speed 50 MB/s 5G
- Stadia speed test results 50 MB/s
Scenario B:
- ISP Fiber Internet speed (and tested with multiple speed tests) >100 MB/s
- Stadia speed test <2 MB/s
I'm convinced that if I'm in roughly the same location geographically, then the speed test should use basically the same servers to do the test, and that they should be correlated to whatever download speed your ISP is offering. However, for my ISP, that simply isn't true. Could this be problem with my ISP (barring I've troubleshooted everything possible on my router), or is it Stadia's problem itself?
This probably belongs in a separate thread, but seems like it's related.