Internet Connection Speed Testing

Ever wonder how fast your cable connection is? Or your DSL connection? Or your phone modem?

I don’t mean the official numbers, because they are always quoted as “up to…”

I mean the real numbers, the effective speed of your Internet connection.

Now you can find out with a neat speed-testing tool on the Vonage web site. You probably know Vonage from their ads for Voice-Over-Internet-Protocol (VOIP). They also sell other telecommunications services.

After finding this tool, I ran tests on my home connection, which is with Cox High Speed Internet (Cox.net) and is rated at nominal speeds of 4Mb/second downstream and 512Kb/second upstream.

Downstream means “to my computer” and upstream means “from my computer to the testing site.” Notice the little “b” — these are “bits” not “bytes.” Bytes are made up of 8 bits — but, of course, bits result in bigger numbers, so they are better for advertising.

One thing about your connection speed, it will change as a function of how much data is flowing over your part of the ISP’s network and how much data is flowing through the various routers on the Internet that are needed to go between you and the testing site.

I tried this test earlier today, with results of 4MB/second downstream and 480KB upstream. Now, the results, shown in the picture below, were 3.46 MB/second downsteam and 514 Kbps upstream.

(click on small image for a larger version)

So, at least for this time today, I’m getting most of the capacity that I’m purchasing. In the evenings, when everybody seems to be on the ‘Net, I expect the numbers to be lower.