The reason for a Bypassed speed test is to find an figure out the most accurate picture of what your bandwidth rates are and to help narrow down any problems. For more info on understanding speed test you can read about it over on the Netspectrum Blog: Understanding Speed Tests


The internet connection will either, come into your home and connect to your modem(DSL and Cable), or it will run into your home from your wireless dish(Rural Wireless) and go through a POE Injector(more on this later) then plug into your wireless router. In both cases, you can picture your modem and dish as doing the same job, taking the internet signal from Netspectrum and converting it to something your devices can use.


Rural Wireless


Cable & DSL


As you can see in the diagrams above, the cable will run from the modem or dish (This cable is called an ethernet cable) and should be directly plugged into your home wireless router, it should be plugged into the port on the back labeled "Internet". Sometimes the port is just yellow or labeled "WAN", it all depends on the brand of router, but they all function the same way. 

Here is an example of what the back of a router would typically look like, each router model is going to be a little different, but they will always be roughly the same:

To run a bypassed speed test we need to find the cable that runs between the Modem/Dish and plugs into the Routers Internet port. Unplug it from the Routers Internet port and plug it directly into your laptop or desktop.



Rural WirelessCable & DSL

Now that you are plugged in directly to your computer you can make sure the internet is connected. 


For Cable and DSL customers, your internet on the computer should come up automatically once you plug it into your laptop.


For Rural Wireless customers(and in some rare cases DSL) you'll have to set up your computer to connect. You can find a guide to help set up your connection(PPPoE Conenction) over in our Netspectrum Knowledge Base: Setting Up PPPoE. 


Note: For Rural Wireless connections there is going to be a small device in the line between the dish and router that is for powering the dish out side, it typically looks like a laptop power block. The cable will run in one port and out the other. We do not need to change this device, just to make sure it is stilled plugged in . This device is called a POE Injector and it will look something like this:

 

Once your laptop is plugged in and everything is connected, you can navigate to http://speed.netspectrum.ca/ and run the speed test. These results should be the most accurate and can show exactly what speeds you are getting or it can help us narrow down where any issues are and help diagnosis the problem.


For more info on understanding speed test you can read about it over on the Netspectrums Blog: Understanding Speed Tests.