by Bruce Tyson

Created on: September 19, 2010

“My Internet is slow.” How many times have you heard that complaint? For most people, the Internet never seems fast enough, but before you order up more bandwidth, check out how fast your connection really is. Here are some ways to do it.

SpeedTest.Net

One of the most popular services for measuring Internet connection speed is SpeedTest.net. Because so many Internet users test their connection with this tool, SpeedTest.net is able to publish annual updates on global Internet speeds. In fact, when you see how fast people in places like Japan, South Korea, Latvia and Moldova surf, you might want to move to another country rather than twiddle around with your measly connection.

With that being said, SpeedTest.net is a well regarded tool for determining the speed of Internet connections. To perform the test, visit their Web site and then click “Begin Test” on the front page. The system will first run a download test and then an upload test based on transit time between you and a nearby regional server. When the test is done, you can answer a brief survey about your Internet service. SpeedTest.net already knows who your provider is, so if you’d like you can tell the world what you think about your service by rating them on a scale of one to five stars.

Pinging

After running SpeedTest.net, you probably won’t like this method very well. After all, you won’t get any graphics, a chance to rail on your ISP, or an opportunity to see how fast the rest of the world surfs. This is a straight-up ping test. To do this, open up a command prompt and type “Ping Microsoft.com.” Of course, you can ping just about any domain. If you are on a LAN, you can ping the default gateway to see why your Internet connection doesn’t work at all. The results tell you how fast a packet went from your computer to the destination and then back.

Anyway, if you have another computer nearby that is on the same network, as yours, you can run ping on both of them to see if one is having Internet connection issues. Of course, some domains block pings because of denial of service attacks, so try to use one that is usually open such as Microsoft or your ISP.

Intel Broadband Speed Test

Getting back to the real wolrd, you can try to use the Intel broadband speed test (http://www.intel.com/consumer/game/broadband-speed-t est.htm). Once you get to the page, click the “Start” button and you’re off to the races. You might want to run this test a few times and then take an average because it has this pesky habit of coming up with a different speed rating every time you run the test.

Airtel Speed Test

The Indian ISP, AirTel has a good speed test at its Web site (http://speed.airtelbroadband.in). As soon as you land on the page it starts calculating the speed of your Internet connection. This is a fast and simple test that seems to give good results

Things to consider

Internet speed tests should be used for informational purposes only because many factors introduce errors into the system. These errors may include:

- Faulty algorithms used by the speed test provider.

- Too many applications running on the computer at the time of the test.

- Background applications using your Internet connection while the test is in progress.

- Internet traffic problems caused by high usage or faulty intermediary routers.

Finally, you should use the same speed test service while tweaking your computer: that way you will know that the results – though potentially inaccurate – will show the relative performance increase you are able to achieve. 

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