Since it launched practically 20 years in the past, Speedtest.internet has been one of the vital standard instruments used to measure web speeds. However, Doug Suttles, the founder and former CEO of Ookla, the community testing firm behind Speedtest, felt that simply measuring velocity was not sufficient to inform folks all they needed to learn about their web connections.
That’s why Suttles is now launching a brand new instrument known as Orb that measures latency, packet loss, jitter, and velocity to offer you a measure of how steady your web connection is.
Suttles, who began Orb with Ookla exec Jamie Steven in 2023, mentioned Speedtest.internet was the appropriate instrument for its time, however as web speeds grew to become much less of a difficulty around the globe, he felt folks wanted new, extra holistic methods to evaluate their web connections.
“Speed checks are just like the dipstick in your automobile, which is able to let you know that you simply ran out of oil as soon as your automobile breaks down. We needed to construct a dashboard to let you know that you’re low on oil, so you may repair that downside,” Suttles informed TechCrunch over a name.
Orb checks community connections for 3 key variables: responsiveness, which is measured by a mix of lag, jitter, latency, and packet loss; reliability, which measures responsiveness over time and packet loss over time; and velocity, which is your common obtain and add speeds. All these variables might be measured over totally different time intervals — one minute, 5 minutes, one hour, and 24 hours.
Combining all three variables, the instrument provides you a rating to point how steady your community connection is. An Orb rating above 80 signifies a great connection; 70-80 means you’ve gotten an okay connection; and if you happen to get something under that, you might have noticeable issues.
If your rating is below 80, the app suggests steps you may take to enhance the efficiency of the community. The startup says it makes use of LLMs to indicate descriptions of key points and the options associated to fixing these.
Techcrunch occasion
Berkeley, CA
|
June 5
BOOK NOW

Orb has apps for varied platforms, together with iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, and Linux. The firm additionally gives a information for putting in the instrument on Raspberry Pi, Onewrt, Docker, Steam Deck, Prox Max, WLAN Pi, older smartphones, and different platforms for many who would need to monitor their connections extra often.
The startup can also be engaged on a characteristic that will let customers arrange an Orb and share it with another person to have them monitor your connection. Both customers will obtain notifications if the connection high quality wavers.

Orb is at the moment free to make use of, and the corporate needs to maintain it that means. Suttles mentioned he’d prefer to license the know-how to enterprises and ISPs to allow them to monitor and determine community points with superior alerts and analytics.
The startup has to date raised $3.8 million in funding from Sidekick Ventures, in addition to particular person traders, together with Fastly senior director Edward Bender; Netflix engineer Jana Iyengar; Big Network CEO Tom Daly; Fastly’s former head of streaming, Lee Chen; the pinnacle of technique and operations of Oculus Studios, Jason Kay; former president of THQ and founding father of Naughty Dog, Jason Rubin; and Vetro’s head of strategic initiatives, Will Cooper.
Steven, who additionally labored on creating Down Detector, mentioned Orb additionally goals to create recipes for various companies that enable you detect if you happen to can entry a specific web site, like Zoom, Netflix, X, or Google Drive, to test if the companies are working.