Testing how fast your Internet Connection is

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RWhite

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I thought the readers here might be interested in this short piece, and it's links. It comes from Pat Crispen's Tourbus newsletter, 5/8/03. http://www.tourbus.com/ - RWhite


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How Fast *IS* Your Internet Connection?
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Over the years, we've pulled our little bus of Internet happiness into three different Web sites that measure your current Internet connection speed:

Bandwidth Place's Speed Test

http://bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/

DSLReport's (now Broadbandreport's) Speed Tests

http://www.dslreports.com/stest

and CNET's Bandwidth Meter

http://webservices.cnet.com/Bandwidth/

All three sites are similar. Click on a button and your Web browser downloads a relatively large file (usually an image). When the download is complete, the site tells you your Internet connection speed at the moment the file was downloaded.

That's the good news. The bad news is that the three sites give you three WILDLY different speeds. So take the results of each site with a massive grain of salt.

As long as you're flinging around the sodium, I have another speed test site to add to your bookmarks list: Numion's YourSpeed at

http://numion.com/yourspeed/

What makes Numion so cool is that it combines a speed test with the crushing feeling that your computer is on the verge of exploding.

Let me explain. While those three other sites test your connection speed by downloading a single image file, Numion tests your connection speed by downloading images from *FORTY* popular Web sites around the world. All at once. The result is both cool and oddly frightening.

Just go to the Numion YourSpeed page and click on the small grey "Start!" button in the middle of the page. [Don't worry about changing any of the settings. You can play around with those later.] Numion will open the "page of doom," loading images from those 40 sites I mentioned earlier. While the page of doom is flashing with icons -- and while you fight the urge to check your computer for smoke -- keep your eyes on the black status bar at the top of the page. This shows you your speed test's progress.

After 30 seconds, Numion displays a page with three graphs. The first (the "speedbar") shows you your speed in kilobyes per second, the second shows you the results of your last 25 Numion speed tests, and the third compares your speed to the speed of other people around the world.

Cool, huh?

Not only does Numion scare the living heck out of you -- that 40 image page is downright intimidating -- I really get the feeling that Numion's results are a *LOT* more accurate than those other three sites.

But maybe that's just me. :)
 
Great tips! I'm gonna check these links out right know!

My ISP is giving me 4 Mbps up/down for the weekend, and I want to see if it's real...
 
Whooo who!!numinion wasnt so bad- i didnt see any smoke- or hesitation even- pretty cool site- interesting- i never knew there were sites that could clock your surf speed

did numinion three times- got a 382kbs, 253 kbs, 347kbs

I did the cnet one and got a 1420kbs- wtf????

awesome
 
Thanks for the link.

420 kbps. Did another one a dslreports and that one was 1817 kbps. The numinion site is giving you a better picture of how the net really works. Different servers will have different speeds and levels of congestion.

Your mileage will vary.
 
Re: Re: Re: Testing how fast your Internet Connection is

kremitmusic said:
Just wanted to show that you can easily falsify the outcome. :)
 
>The result is both cool and oddly frightening.

What's so scary about loading the home pages of 40 sites and then repeating it when it finishes?

All that blinking giving you seizures?
 
Throughput (2)
1612 Bps
bytes per second

Throughput
13 kbps
kilobits per second


:eek: :eek: :eek:
 
I thought you were going to fix that? Is your ISP really that bad?
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Testing how fast your Internet Connection is

christiaan said:
Just wanted to show that you can easily falsify the outcome. :)

so howdya do it- funny- but if i falsified MY outcome i'd only be fooling MYSELF :)
so i guess it could be falsified by the company showing your results
 
Note that the numion site doesn't actually test *YOUR* speed... it's more of a general indication of the web browsing speeds in your region. While it is somewhat dependent on your internet connection, it is also dependent on the speed of the sites you're accessing, and the congestion between you & them.

Thus you should notice results that prove that a 256kbps connection is more than enough speed for general web browsing. And just because you score in the 200's, for instance, doesn't mean that you should be calling up your ISP.

The best way to test your actual connection is to find a download server that is close to you and always fast. And remember that SDSL is actually about 10-20% SLOWER than the plan you signed up for (e.g. a 256K plan might only give you a max of 192..that's just physics for you).

I have a 768/512 connection, and I routinely download files at 40K/s. At a very slow site I might only see 20-30K/s. At a very fast site I've seen upwards of 70K/s. That's just the way she goes. I will say that in general the US internet as a whole has been speeding up over the past couple years IMO.

Slackmaster 2000
 
moskus said:
I thought you were going to fix that? Is your ISP really that bad?

No, that's the speed of my brain right now... :eek: :D

BTW, yeah, my ISP is that bad, but very cheap... I mean it very very cheap... I got what I paid... :(
 
kremitmusic said:
so howdya do it- funny- but if i falsified MY outcome i'd only be fooling MYSELF :)
so i guess it could be falsified by the company showing your results
Check the url. In there you'll find your score. change that value to anything you want, reload and there you have it.
 
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