Test your Internet Connection Speed.

How it works and what it does

This is a simple speed test that works by transfering a randomly created file to your computer and measuring the time it takes to do it. The files is 512 Kilobytes in size and should take about 32 seconds on a 128 Kbit ISDN connection or about 128 seconds on a 32 Kbit connection.

It then displays your connection speed, your download speed and a graph comparing your connection to other connection types as in the example below.

A fast dialup connection would be 48Kbits, a ISDN connection using both channels(phone lines) is 128Kbits, using 1 channel would be 64Kbits. ADSL connections usually start at 256Kbits for the cheapest plans and go up from there. Satellite also starts at 256Kbits and goes up from there.

Internet connections are usually quoted in Kb - Kbits - Kilobits.
Downloading is usually quoted in KB - KBytes - KiloBytes.

The reason being that most things you download (files,songs pictures etc) list their size in KiloBytes( or MegaBytes 1 MB = 1024 KiloBytes). This allows you to work out roughly how long it will take to download. There are 8 bits to a Byte, 1024 Bytes to a KiloByte, so 1 KiloByte equals 8192 bits! Therefore in the example above, to get the download speed from the connection speed you would divide 122.90 by 8 ie. 122.90 / 8 = 15.36 KiloBytes

When you click on the 'Test Connection' below, a window will popup and run the test. It's very important that you don't have any other programs accessing the net at the same time( Virus scanner downloading updates, sending/recieving emails etc) as this will affect the download rate of the test and display a connection speed lower than what you actually have.