Pong.com vs Cloudflare Speed Test: Same Network, Different Conclusions

You run two speed tests on the same connection, in the same minute. One says your gaming quality is "Poor." The other says "Excellent." Both are built on the same Cloudflare infrastructure. Both measure nearly identical raw numbers. So what is going on? The answer has nothing to do with which test is broken and everything to do with how each one interprets the data it collects.

We ran Cloudflare's speed test and Pong.com side by side on the same connection. The raw measurements were remarkably close: download speeds within 15% of each other, upload speeds nearly identical, base latency within a millisecond. But the quality ratings were polar opposites. Cloudflare labeled the connection "Poor" for gaming and video chatting. Pong.com gave it 87/100 for both categories, with an overall connection health grade of A. Same wires, same minute, completely different conclusions.

This is not about bashing Cloudflare. Cloudflare is excellent infrastructure, and we mean that literally: Pong.com's speed test engine runs on Cloudflare Workers. We chose Cloudflare because their global edge network is fast, reliable, and spans over 300 cities worldwide. This article is about something more fundamental: how the methodology behind a quality rating determines the conclusion, and why that matters for the decisions you make about your internet connection.

Same Connection, Same Minute, Opposite Conclusions

Here is exactly what happened. We ran both tests back to back on a residential cable connection during a normal weekday afternoon. No VPN, no special configuration, no cherry-picking. The router was a standard ISP-provided unit with default settings. Both tests completed within 60 seconds of each other.

Look at the raw measurements first. Download speeds differ by about 15%, which is normal variation between any two speed tests run moments apart. Upload speeds are nearly identical at 18.0 and 18.4 Mbps. Base latency is within 1.4 milliseconds of each other. These are the numbers you would expect from two tests measuring the same connection through the same network. Now look at the quality ratings. Cloudflare says gaming is "Poor" and video chatting is "Poor." Pong.com says gaming is 87 out of 100 and video calls are 87 out of 100 with an overall health grade of A. The raw data agrees. The interpretation could not disagree more.

Built on the Same Network

When two speed tests disagree, the usual explanation is that they use different server infrastructure. One test might route through an ISP-hosted server while another crosses the public internet. Different paths, different congestion points, different results. That explanation does not apply here. Both Cloudflare's speed test and Pong.com route test traffic through the exact same Cloudflare edge network.

This is what makes this comparison uniquely informative. When Pong.com and Speedtest.net disagree, you can reasonably attribute the difference to network path variation. But when Pong.com and Cloudflare's own speed test disagree, the network path is the same. The infrastructure is the same. The only variable left is how each platform processes, weighs, and labels the raw data. It eliminates the most common source of speed test disagreement and isolates the one factor that actually drives the difference: scoring methodology.

Why Cloudflare Rates a Good Connection as 'Poor'

Cloudflare's speed test measures a metric called loaded latency: your ping time while the connection is simultaneously being saturated with download or upload traffic. In our test, the base latency was 29.4ms, but loaded latency during the download test spiked to 130ms, and during the upload test it reached 88.3ms. Cloudflare then compares these loaded latency values against fixed thresholds. For gaming, the threshold appears to be around 100ms. Since 130ms exceeds that threshold, the verdict is "Poor." For video chatting, a similar threshold applies. The logic is binary: if loaded latency exceeds the cutoff, the rating drops regardless of how every other metric looks.

Think of it like a doctor measuring your heart rate. Your resting heart rate is 65 bpm, which is excellent. Then the doctor asks you to sprint on a treadmill at full speed and measures again: 165 bpm. A binary threshold system would say "heart rate exceeded 150 bpm, cardiac health: Poor." A nuanced assessment would look at your resting rate, recovery time, blood pressure, and overall fitness to conclude you are in great shape, and that an elevated heart rate during peak exertion is completely expected. The loaded latency during a speed test is the internet equivalent of your heart rate during a sprint. It is supposed to go up. The question is whether the increase is reasonable, and whether the rest of your metrics paint a healthy picture.

How Pong.com Reads the Same Data Differently

Pong.com takes a multi-metric weighted approach rather than relying on a single threshold. Instead of asking "does loaded latency exceed X?" it asks "considering all the relevant factors, how well will this connection handle a specific activity?" Each metric is assigned a weight based on how much it actually affects the user experience for that activity. For gaming, base latency and jitter matter most. For streaming, throughput dominates. For video calls, upload speed and jitter are weighted heavily. The result is a score from 0 to 100 that reflects the overall picture rather than a single worst-case number.

The key difference is in how each platform weights the metrics for different activities. Gaming quality depends primarily on base latency and jitter, because online games use relatively little bandwidth (typically 5-15 Mbps) and are extremely sensitive to timing consistency. A connection with 28ms base latency and 2.5ms jitter will feel responsive and smooth in virtually any online game. The fact that latency spikes to 130ms when you simultaneously saturate 235 Mbps of bandwidth is irrelevant to the gaming experience, because you are never doing both at the same time during actual gameplay. Pong.com's weighted approach captures this nuance. Cloudflare's threshold approach does not.

Loaded Latency: The Most Misunderstood Metric

Loaded latency is your ping time measured while your connection is simultaneously being flooded with as much traffic as it can handle. It is a legitimate and important metric because it reveals bufferbloat, the tendency for routers to queue excess packets in oversized memory buffers, adding latency under load. Bufferbloat is a real problem that causes lag, choppy video calls, and slow-feeling connections even when raw speed is high. But the context in which loaded latency is measured matters enormously for how it should be interpreted.

Our test showed 130ms of loaded latency, which falls in the moderate bufferbloat range. That is a real finding worth knowing about. But here is the critical context: that 130ms was measured while the speed test was pushing 235+ Mbps of traffic through the connection simultaneously. In real life, an online game uses 5-15 Mbps. A 4K Netflix stream uses about 25 Mbps. Even a Zoom call only needs 3-4 Mbps. On a 235 Mbps connection, normal activities use a small fraction of available bandwidth, which means the actual latency increase during real usage is far smaller than what the fully-saturated stress test reveals. The bufferbloat is real, but the speed test represents the absolute worst-case scenario, not the daily experience.

Pong.com captures this nuance through its bufferbloat grade system. Rather than using loaded latency under full saturation as a binary pass/fail for gaming quality, it grades the bufferbloat separately (this connection got a B, meaning slight to moderate bufferbloat) and factors it appropriately into each activity score. The result: 87/100 for gaming acknowledges that base latency and jitter are excellent while noting that there is room for improvement on the bufferbloat front.

Two Philosophies: Binary Threshold vs Weighted Analysis

At the core of this disagreement are two fundamentally different philosophies about how to communicate connection quality to users. Binary threshold scoring picks one or two metrics, compares them against a cutoff, and delivers a simple verdict: good or bad, pass or fail. Weighted analysis scoring considers multiple metrics simultaneously, assigns importance weights based on how each metric affects a specific activity, and produces a nuanced score. Neither philosophy is inherently wrong. But they can lead to dramatically different conclusions from the same data, and the way those conclusions are communicated shapes user behavior.

The binary approach has the advantage of simplicity. It is easy to understand and impossible to misinterpret. But it has a significant downside: it can mislead users into thinking their connection is fundamentally broken when it is not. A user who sees "Poor" for gaming might conclude they need a more expensive internet plan, switch ISPs, or give up on online gaming entirely, when in reality their 28ms ping and 2.5ms jitter would deliver a smooth gaming experience. The weighted approach requires slightly more effort to interpret (a score of 87/100 is less immediately visceral than "Poor"), but it gives users a proportional understanding of where they stand and, critically, an indication of what could be improved rather than just a binary verdict.

Does the Rating Difference Actually Matter?

Absolutely. Speed test quality ratings are not just informational. People make real decisions based on them. They decide whether to call their ISP, whether to upgrade their plan, whether to buy a new router, and whether their connection is good enough for the activities they care about. A misleading rating can send users down expensive and unnecessary troubleshooting paths, or conversely, can mask a genuine problem that deserves attention.

This is where the practical difference between scoring philosophies becomes clear. Cloudflare's "Poor" rating is technically defensible based on loaded latency thresholds, but it does not give you any indication of what to do about it. Pong.com's 87/100 with a bufferbloat grade of B tells you two things at once: your connection is strong overall, and there is one specific area (bufferbloat) where improvement is possible. That is actionable information. It points you toward enabling SQM on your router rather than spending money on a plan upgrade that would not address the underlying issue.

What Each Platform Does Best

Cloudflare deserves genuine credit for building one of the best speed tests on the internet. It is fast, clean, privacy-respecting, and completely free. It runs in any browser without an account, measures a comprehensive set of raw metrics including loaded latency and jitter, and presents data in a thoughtful, well-designed interface. If you want quick, reliable raw measurements from a trustworthy source, Cloudflare's speed test is an excellent choice. Its limitation is specifically in how it translates those raw numbers into quality ratings.

• Cloudflare Speed Test excels at: Fast, ad-free raw measurements. Clean interface with detailed technical data. Privacy-first approach with no tracking. Comprehensive metrics including loaded latency and jitter across download and upload. Trusted infrastructure from one of the internet's most respected companies.
• Pong.com excels at: Translating raw metrics into actionable quality scores. Weighted, activity-specific ratings (gaming, streaming, video calls). Connection health grading that identifies specific fixable issues. Bufferbloat detection with a clear A-through-F grade. Helping users understand what to do about their results, not just what the numbers are.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line

The numbers do not lie, but labels can mislead. When two speed tests built on the same Cloudflare infrastructure measure the same connection and produce opposite quality ratings, it proves that scoring methodology is not a minor implementation detail. It is the lens through which raw data becomes the advice that shapes your decisions. A "Poor" label sends you searching for problems that may not exist. A score of 87/100 with a B bufferbloat grade tells you exactly where you stand and what, if anything, to improve.

Cloudflare built incredible infrastructure and a genuinely excellent speed test. Pong.com runs on that same infrastructure because we believe it is the best in the world. Where we differ is in our belief that users deserve more than binary pass/fail verdicts. A connection with 28ms latency, 2.5ms jitter, 235 Mbps download, and moderate bufferbloat is not "Poor." It is a strong connection with one specific, fixable weakness. And communicating that clearly, with proportional scores and actionable context, is how a speed test can actually help you make your internet better instead of just making you worry.