Australian PC User contributing editor
Five free ways to test your broadband speed
While some internet service providers (ISPs) provide special widgets that keep a record of your download quota and speeds, not all do.
Thankfully, there are a number of online speed testing tools that will give you a good guide as to just how fast your broadband connection is.
Very slick online tool that test both upload and download speeds with the speedometer graphics commonly used by everyone these days.
Allows you to check your speed around the world. Arugably the best tool out there as it allows you to choose virtually any test location around the world to see how your broadband connection fares. Great if you’re downloading files from around the world and want to find out your connection speeds to different countries. Reasonably quick as well.
This test available on ZDNet’s Australian website is fairly basic, doesn’t allow you to choose a test location and it only tests download speeds. However, it’s quick and looks to be reasonably accurate. The problem though is that it doesn’t tell you the server location it’s using to test your connection speed so not quite as useful as SpeedTest. It is slick and quick so if you’re in a hurry, it could be worth a go.
There are quite a few sites (including CNet) that also use this basic tool so you should be able to find it easily if none of the others are working for some reason.
A simple test more in line with the ZDNet tester but this one at least does upload and download testing. More of an advertising tool to show you different broadband plans and deals by the look of it but it’s at least a reasonable test if you can’t get onto any others for some reason.
This is better than the ZDNet tool given that it tests upload speeds as well but I’d be checking the results from this one with a “second opinion” tool just to make sure it’s accurate. It’s probably okay and it’s results seem to match up with the other tools on our testing but it’s worth having a second tool confirm it just to be sure.
Broadband Speed Checker is based in the UK and although it doesn’t tell you where its test server is based, at least being a UK tool, you’ll get an idea of the speeds you can get when transferring data to and from that area, wherever you are in the world. It’s a nice slick tool that provides both upload and download speed checks.
Much like the BroadbandGuide Speed Test, this is slick and quick. Just be sure to use the SpeedTest tool in your local area to see your broadband connection’s maximum speed before you hit the panic button and think you’re getting robbed of speed.
5. Firefox add-on – Broadband Speed Test and Diagnostics 1.2.5
This plugin for Firefox gives you upload and download tests plus a diagnostic tool (Windows only) and configuration window showing you the IP address trail and your current configuration. The results are displayed in a fairly basic graph and again, you can’t choose the server location you’re testing with.
There are a heap of tools out there similar to these but these are as good examples as you’ll find anywhere of the web.
Know of any others that do better? Let us know below in the comment box.
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| Print article | This entry was posted by Darren Yates on February 17, 2009 at 9:49 am, and is filed under Benchmarking, Buyers' Guide, Internet. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
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