# Beyond Speed: Orb App Offers a Holistic View of Your Internet Connection

## Beyond Speed: Orb App Offers a Holistic View of Your Internet Connection

For almost two decades, Speedtest.net has reigned supreme as the go-to tool for gauging internet speeds. However, Doug Suttles, the founder and former CEO of Ookla (the company behind Speedtest), believed that speed alone doesn’t paint the whole picture of a user’s internet experience. That’s why he’s launching Orb, a new application designed to measure internet reliability in addition to speed.

Orb, created in 2023 by Suttles and former Ookla executive Jamie Steven, aims to provide a more comprehensive assessment of your internet connection by measuring latency, packet loss, jitter, and speed. Suttles argues that while Speedtest.net was suitable for its time, the increasing ubiquity of faster internet speeds necessitates a more holistic approach.

“Speed tests are like the dipstick in your car, which will tell you that you ran out of oil once your car breaks down,” Suttles explained to TechCrunch. “We wanted to build a dashboard to tell you that you are low on oil, so you can fix that problem.”

Orb focuses on three key variables:

* **Responsiveness:** A composite measurement of lag, jitter, latency, and packet loss.
* **Reliability:** Measures responsiveness and packet loss over time.
* **Speed:** Traditional download and upload speeds.

The app allows users to measure these variables over different time intervals: one minute, five minutes, one hour, and 24 hours.

By combining these three variables, Orb generates a score to indicate the stability of your network connection. An Orb score above 80 signifies a good connection, 70-80 indicates an adequate connection, and anything below that suggests potential issues. If your score falls below 80, the app provides suggestions on how to improve your network performance, using LLMs to describe key problems and related solutions.

Orb is available on a variety of platforms, including iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, and Linux. For users who want to monitor their connections more frequently, the company also provides a guide for installing the tool on Raspberry Pi, Onewrt, Docker, Steam Deck, Prox Max, WLAN Pi, older smartphones, and other platforms.

Currently in development is a feature that will allow users to share their Orb data with others, enabling them to monitor the connection remotely and receive notifications when the connection quality deteriorates.

Orb is currently free to use, and Suttles intends to keep it that way. He envisions licensing the technology to enterprises and ISPs, allowing them to monitor and identify network issues with advanced alerts and analytics.

The startup has raised $3.8 million in funding from Sidekick Ventures and individual investors from companies like Fastly, Netflix, and Oculus Studios.

Jamie Steven also noted that Orb aims to create recipes for different services, allowing users to quickly check the availability of popular sites like Zoom, Netflix, X, or Google Drive.

With its emphasis on reliability and responsiveness, Orb promises to offer a more nuanced and practical perspective on internet performance than traditional speed tests.