so, been banging my head against this proxy speed testing thing for days and finally cracked some numbers that might actually help someone here. here's the setup I used: i grabbed a handful of residential proxies from 3 providers, pinged them with a basic curl script at 10 second intervals over a 5-minute window. recorded the response times and throughput. results? provider a had an avg ping of 150ms, max hit 220ms, throughput averaging 1.2 mbps. provider b? 110ms avg, max 180ms, throughput around 2 mbps. provider c? 250ms avg, max 350ms, throughput 0.8 mbps. the kicker? i also tested with a simple browser script, mimicking real user load, and the difference in speed was huge. some proxies that looked fast in the dashboard actually had massive latency under real load, while others held steady. the takeaway? never rely on just one test, keep running multiple checks over different times of the day. also, check throughput at the same time as ping sometimes a proxy with higher latency still wins cuz of better throughput. for scrapers, the fastest ping isn't always the best, you need consistent throughput. anyone else running tests like this? would love to see some real data, not just marketing claims.