Fastest broadband networks in South Africa

Ookla’s Speedtest.net servers are widely used to test iInternet speeds, and with numerous South African Speedtest.net servers it is currently the most accurate publically available measure of local broadband network performance.

Locally hosted servers in Cape Town, Gauteng and Durban provide a good view of South African Internet speeds. International servers add to the bandwidth performance measurement equation.

Ookla’s Net Index provides a good overview of the average network speeds in South Africa, but as their results algorithm filters out small samples (less than 100 tests per network) some of the more interesting results may be lost.

If the average network speeds of all tests to South Africa in April 2011 are calculated, South Africa’s educational institutions dominate results, as shown in the table below.

The reason behind this may be closely linked to the CSIR Meraka Institute and TENET’s continued South African National Research Network (SANReN) upgrades, providing tertiary educational and research institutions with connection speeds ranging between 1Gbps and 10Gbps.

When looking at last month’s tests to international servers, the results look somewhat different. The results are not only much lower, but also contain some interesting companies which you may not expect.

The overall average speed results – hence taking both local and international server speed tests into account – again show the strength of connectivity at local tertiary institutions.

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