Can’t you do it on the currently-occupied property by standing outside the building with your mobile phone in hand?
Possibly, but given the router position it would give an artificially low speed at best.
Here, the power, internet, anything can go out if the wind blows mildly. This is because we are in one of the few localities in our area that has old overhead wires rather than an underground system.
So although our internet service is generally good, it can be interrupted at the drop of a hat. Because our apartments are close together, including my own and because we resisted the temptation to use one account for all three, I can usually simply give one apartment the other apartment’s details and they’ll be fine. We also have a hotspot locally - they need our password for that but that’s okay if there’s an outage.
But I make no claims at all in our listing about speed or guaranteed service. I can’t.
Same happens where I live. Couple drops of rain and a little gust of wind and the power goes out. Crappy 3rd world infrastructure. Plus regular maintenance seems to be an alien concept here. They wait until a big branch falls on the electrical lines in a storm and get a bunch of reports of no power, instead of cutting tree branches on a regular basis.
Then there’s a thing they do here when some big political muckedy muck is in town- they shut down all the telecommunications so kidnappers and assassins can’t coordinate their evil plans.
The other day there was no cell signal and no Wifi for over 24 hours.
I’m about to sign up for a new internet service in my area with which I’ll get strong unlimited Wifi, instead of my current cell-based, metered, expensive Wifi, but I still wouldn’t post Wifi speeds or promises to guests who are reliant on it. If the electric goes out, there won’t be any Wifi.
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I’ve had guests ask me about the speed but I’m always clear that I cannot control certain variables that may reduce the speed…
I’m going to add a contrarian viewpoint here. I’m so glad that after this deadline the accurate Wi-Fi speeds will be posted for the consumers to make a judgment calls. I pay a lot for a very fast service, and I have spent a lot of money on ethernet, three gigantic mesh units, and I certainly just can’t wait until my speeds are published and show up those folks who have a small router and the guest uses it as it passes through three walls .
I think guests need some sort of a measure so that when they book someplace because it has a pretty front picture or beautiful throw pillows on the bed, they’re aware that the Wi-Fi is not up to their expectations.
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Have you read the privacy terms of the 3rd party speed test software Airbnb is using? It says your IP address and other personal data will be made public.
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That’s not being contrary, in fact it’s more like the person with the large (penis extension) sports car looking down on the guy with the shabby 3 door Peugeot, like mine 
So, “gigantic mesh units”, how big is “gigantic”, like maybe the size of a wardrobe or maybe as big as an outdoor trampoline? We must be told, I demand it.
JF
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Sorry if my typing is wobbly, my large sports car is not steady lol. You are right tho, from my perch here I do look down on the peasants who drive inferior cars lol.
I started out with the Lynksys system, and when I upgraded to their 6.0 I was shocked to see that the formerly small units were now 3x the size.
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Be careful, the higher up your perch is, the more painful it is when you have that wobble and fall off…
When one lives in a Spanish city, driving an “inferior” car has many advantages.
Parking: you don’t give a feck when nudging another car, or being nudged.
Roundabouts: the guy in the shitty car always gets right of way!
Street parking: no one ever breaks into the shitty car.
It’s hardly any wonder my Maserati has done less than 1,000 in the past year…
JF
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As someone whose never had a shiny new vehicle in my life, you know what’s always cracked me up? When people get all upset because someone put a scratch or dent in their bumper. Isn’t that the entire purpose of a bumper, that it prevents the body of the car from getting dinged?
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The first time I had a shiny vehicle, I was about a year from finishing school and the dealership offered a special deal for near-graduates so I went and got a shiny new car.
My (older) boyfriend went with me to pick it up. When we got back to my house and parked it, he took out his keys and promptly put a tiny half-inch scratch in the driver-side door. I promptly lost my 
He said, “Well, that’s out of the way. Now you can still park close to the store and on the street downtown and actually enjoy the car”.
I have had a few new cars since then and promptly add the first scratch myself on the first day.
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We managed four years without a car, mainly because it’s a pain in the arse owning a car when you live not only in the centre of a Spanish city, but in a historic zone.
Any time we needed a car, we simply hired one or took advantage of friends with cars.
Sadly, the days of hiring a car for €30 for a week are now gone, the best quote I could get in September for a fortnight was €700, before any insurance!
There are some cracking deals for hybrids here just now, and we almost went for a shiny new one. Then we seen sense, or rather walking home seen the state of some pretty newish looking cars, scrapes dents etc.
Feck it, let’s buy a puddlehopper!
So we did. A little Peugeot 207 with less than 30k on the clock, and it came pre dented and scratched, at no extra cost 
Great wee city car and you don’t give a feck where you park it or leave it. Stress free motoring 
JF
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We went without for 6 years when we lived in NY and only hired a car on a rare occasion, usually to see my inlaws. I really really liked not having a car! Of course it’s not practical everywhere so we bought a car when we left NY but we have managed to just keep the one and share it between the two of us for the last 10 years. It has some issues now and we’re thinking about trading it in but I’m really not looking forward to it.
Sounds perfect.
I agree, they should not even have a spot to input your bandwidth. If you have a fiber connection, you should get a consistent speed. But for other types of connections the speed won’t be consistent. And a guest could have 3 kids streaming movies and then do a speed test and find it is lower than you posted, and then complain. No thanks! I’ll leave that box blank.
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That’s not correct, even with a fibre connection providers will/can throttle bandwidth dependent upon demand locally.
The main issue is with WiFi connections, which are subject to many variables that can affect the actual speed a guest gets.
In our case, even the weather affects the end users quality of connection.
JF
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Exactly. There are many reasons a guest could run a speed test and get poor results that have NOTHING to do with the WiFi router or the Internet connection.
.
It would be EZ as pie for a guest to accidentally or intentionally skew results in their favor.
.
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Yes, absolutely. And for the fact alone that a guest could be connected via WiFi and from some corner of the house with poor reception – listing your speed makes little/no sense.
Another thing to note is that a guest’s equipment and settings can have a huge impact. I had a problem and called the cable company out to investigate. My company’s VPN service was the bottleneck.
I have had a guest who has the same issue. Shut the VPN off, and speed improves significantly.
Why would you have a VPN port active unless you need to log in to your computer remotely?