Testing your actual bandwidth
So how fast is your Internet connection? To find out, read on. There's a
myth that using the Ping command will give you tell you how fast your connection
is. The truth about ping is that is measures latency, the round-trip time it
takes for a server to respond to a request. Latency is critical for real-time
gaming, but not nearly as important for typical surfing or large file
downloading. True bandwidth measuring is done by download/uploading a file
from/to a server. There are many factors that can affect this test, such as
Internet traffic, server performance, connection speed and the performance of
your on computer. Here are some sites that discuss bandwidth in much more
detail. DSL Reports" (aka
"Broadband Reports") is one of the most popular broadband sites, providing
industry news, tweaks and tests.
Here's one of their bandwidth tests.
The Bandwidth Place has some quick speed tests.
Here's their basic test. They also let you test bandwidth on your local
network so you can find out how your 10/100 NIC or 11 Mbps wireless network is
really performing.
