Thursday, February 10, 2011

How to check the speed of your Internet Connection


I remember when I first started browsing, broadband was unheard of in India. Dial-up connections offered by BSNL were the rage in those days and the fastest connection available (economically feasible) to a normal user was the 128 kbps (Kilobits per second)ISDN connection, while the dial-ups offered a measly 56.6 kbps. India has come along way since. Now, broadband connections offering atleast 3.1 Mbps (Megabits per second) are a must.
However, one thing has remained unchanged. Even then we never got the advertised speed, nor do we get it now. There are a few websites  which run a test on your internetconnection and tell you your exact internet speed and your ping rate.
The first website to try out is www.testmyspeed.com











Moving on to the next site, www.speedtest.net.










The last site on our list is www.bandwithplace.com.












Please Note that Speedtest & ISP’s use bits per second /programs use bytes per second. Because there are 8 bits to a byte, 1.2 megabytes a second sounds right. So, calculate wisely before blaming your ISP.
In simple language, you should get 1/8th of the advertised bandwidth means 2MBPS connection should give 0.25 MegaBytes / sec = 0.25 KiloBytes / sec.
With the help of these websites you can know exactly what speed you are getting. Do please share with us how many of you are getting the advertised 3 Mbps.

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