Orb, a new app by Ookla’s ex-CEO, offers a broader picture of your internet connection

Speedtest.net has been one of the most popular tools for measuring internet speeds since its start almost 20 years ago. Doug Suttles, the founder and former CEO of Ookla, the network test company behind Speedtest, was of the opinion that only the measurement of the speed was sufficient to tell people everything they wanted to know about their internet connections.

So Suttles is now starting a new tool called called Bullet This measures latency, package loss, jitter and speed to give you a measure of how stable your internet connection is.

Suttles, who started with Ookla Managing Director Jamie Steven in 2023, said Speedtest.net was the right tool for his time, but when internet speeds became less a problem worldwide, he felt people for new, holistic opportunities to assess their internet connections.

“Speed ​​tests are like the stick in your car that tells you that the oil has leaked as soon as your car breaks down. We wanted to build a dashboard to tell you that you only have oil so that you can fix this problem,” Suttles told techcrunch about a call.

ORB checks network connections for three key variables: reaction ability, which is measured based on a combination of delay, jitter, latency and package loss; Reliability, which measures reaction ability over time and loss of the package over time; And speed that is your usual download and upload speed. All of these variables can be measured over different time intervals – one minute, five minutes, one hour and 24 hours.

The tool combines all three variables and gives you a score to display how stable your network connection is. An ORB points over 80 indicates a good connection; 70-80 means that you have a good connection. And if you get something underneath, you may have noticeable problems.

If your score is below 80, the app suggests steps that you can carry out to improve the performance of the network. The startup indicates to use LLMs to show descriptions of key problems and the suggestions to solve them.

ORB has apps for various platforms, including iOS, Android, MacOS, Windows and Linux. The company also offers guidelines for installing the tool for Raspberry Pi, OneWrt, Docker, Steam Deck, Prox Max, WLAN PI, older smartphones and other platforms for those who want to monitor their connections more often.

The startup also works on a function with which users can set up a ball and share them with someone else so that they have their connection monitored. Both users receive notifications when the connection quality blows.

ORB is currently free to use, and the company wants to keep it that way. Suttles said he wanted to licens the technology to companies and ISPS so that they can monitor and identify network problems with progressive warnings and analyzes.

So far, the startup has collected 3.8 million US dollars of Sidekick Ventures and individual investors, including faster high -ranking director Edward Bender. Netflix engineer Jana Iyengar; Tom Daly, CEO by Big Network; Fastly’s former streaming, Lee Chen; The head of the strategy and operations by Oculus Studios, Jason Kay; Former President of THQ and founder of Naughty Dog, Jason Rubin; And Vetros Head of Strategic Initiatives wants Cooper.

Steven, who also worked on the creation of Down detector, said that ORB should also create recipes for various services with which you can recognize whether you can access a specific website such as zoom, Netflix, X or Google Drive to check whether the services work.