Orb: The Next-Gen Internet Connection Tester From Speedtest’s Founders Goes Beyond Speed
Tired of just knowing your internet speed? A new app called Orb, created by Doug Suttles, the former CEO of Ookla (the company behind Speedtest.net), aims to provide a more comprehensive view of your internet connection's health. Orb measures not only speed but also latency, packet loss, and jitter, offering a stability score that goes beyond simple download and upload numbers. This marks a significant step in how we understand and troubleshoot our online experiences.
As Suttles himself put it, Speedtest was useful, but with increasingly fast internet speeds being common, people need more detailed metrics. He likens Speedtest to a car's dipstick that only tells you there's a problem *after* the car breaks down. Orb, on the other hand, is designed as a "dashboard" to proactively identify issues before they impact your online activity. He started Orb with Ookla exec Jamie Steven in 2023, realizing the need for more holistic internet assessments.
How Does Orb Work? Orb monitors three key variables: responsiveness, reliability, and speed. It assigns a score from 0 to 100 based on these factors. A score above 80 suggests a good connection, 70-80 indicates an acceptable connection, and below 70 may signal noticeable problems. When scores dip below 80, Orb offers suggestions powered by LLMs to help users diagnose and address issues. This gives concrete recommendations to tackle problems and improve connection performance.
Orb is not just limited to speed; it is about the quality and reliability of internet connections, as stated by Michael Crider of PCWorld: "It’s designed to give you a deeper, more holistic look at your active internet connection, with real-time monitoring, more useful and active information, and a better look at your connection over time."
Platform Availability and Future Plans: One of Orb's strengths is its accessibility. The app is available on iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, and Linux. It can even be installed on Raspberry Pi, allowing for continuous network monitoring. Orb also plans to introduce "recipes" for testing connectivity to specific services like YouTube and Microsoft Teams. A feature that would let users set up an Orb and share it with someone else to have them monitor your connection is also in development. Both users will receive notifications if the connection quality wavers. These features will further help in diagnosing service-specific networking issues.
A Free Tool with Enterprise Ambitions: Currently, Orb is free to use, with plans to license the technology to enterprises and ISPs for advanced network monitoring and analytics. The project has secured $3.8 million in funding from firms like Sidekick Ventures and individual investors including Fastly senior director Edward Bender, Netflix engineer Jana Iyengar, and others. Orb is an ambitious project aimed at providing comprehensive internet connection analysis to both casual users and industry professionals.
Orb avoids Beta phase entirely, releasing the app for everyone without any cost. Suttles sees the consumer apps as a R&D platform to help the new tools achieve industry-wide relevance. He shared that the team has a backlog of future implementations, including the concept of time-limited links where technicians from ISP can access your connection's performance in real-time in order to optimize the connection.
Orb stands out as a free and surprisingly ambitious project providing useful insights on your internet connection that goes beyond speed. Are you eager to try Orb and gain a better understanding of your internet connection? Share your thoughts and experiences with the app @Techpus.com