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Is there a way to detect the internet speed of a mobile device?

I wish to serve either the mobile or the full website to a phone, depending on the speed of the internet connection used at the time of loading.

The goal is to serve the mobile website, with basic information for when people are watching on a mobile phone with slow connection, but the complete responsive website when the internet connection can handle that load-time, without making viewers wait to long.

I wish to find out wether this is possible, and if it is a nice addition to a website or not.

Sander Koedood
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1 Answers1

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You should serve content to a mobile device based on its user agent string.

Alternatively, some websites choose to implore a responsive layout that lets a single page react to different screen sizes, while still being the same page underneath.

Never rely on the internet connection speed to determine what content to send - it is highly unreliable. There are 4G networks that are faster than a lot of DSL providers right now, so it would be impossible to account for the 20mbit 4G cell phone user vs. the 512kbit dialup user sitting on a desktop computer.

qJake
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  • I wish to serve content depending on current internet speed. I don't want to serve a mobile phone the mobile website, which has only the most basic information, when I also have a responsive site, which would be way more interesting if you can handle the load time. – Sander Koedood May 28 '13 at 13:14
  • Then choose the mobile version, and give the user the option of falling back to the desktop version of the site. There is a reason that the "big websites" don't do this, again, it's unreliable and confusing to users. A few examples are Google and Amazon, that present the user with a mobile site, with a link at the bottom to "View full desktop site". This is the most effective way to give your users the option of what they want to see. Additionally, your mobile site shouldn't contain less information or functionality than your desktop site. – qJake May 28 '13 at 13:16
  • I mainly agree with your points, but it's also a bit of a testcase. I'm interested in wether this is possible, and if it is, wether it adds to usability. Thanks for your time and answers :) – Sander Koedood May 28 '13 at 13:19
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    In that case, the question you should be asking instead is "How can I detect the user's mobile connection speed from my webserver?" which in my opinion is probably very difficult, if not impossible to do. If you're really that curious, you could ask another, separate question here on SO. – qJake May 28 '13 at 13:44
  • Thanks, that is a better way of asking the question. – Sander Koedood May 28 '13 at 14:05