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Tired of the World-wide Wait ?
Book Mark Internet Speed Meter
This nifty utility - Internet speed meter tests your net connectivity and plots a graph showing how your present connection speed fares against a slew of standard connection speeds. It tells you at a glance - your peak speed and the averaged speed. Whether you have a broadband connection or you work with a dial-up connection, you will need to test the speed of your net connection in a reliable manner. Click on the adjacent image to check your connection speed. Or click here to check your real world connection speed.
The following table shows what speed you need to accomplish what kind of job without waiting for the end of the world.
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Usage
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Speed
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Browsing, email, Social Media, SD video calls using Skype
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1Mbps
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VoIP calls, streaming Radio
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0.5 Mbps
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Telecommuting, Transferring MS Office files
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5-25 Mbps
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Streaming Standard Definition Video, HD Video conferencing
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5 Mbps
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Streaming High Definition Video
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5-8 Mbps
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Streaming Ultra High Definition Video
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25 Mbps
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There may be some difference in the results shown here and other tools you may find elsewhere. Most tools use a test server close to your physical location and as a result may show a higher/faster connection. That is the theoretical maximum speed you will attain with that ISP. But the actual speed to your target website will vary. This is the reason why some connections boasting of 100 Mbps still has unacceptable latency when you view sites. But we use our own server - which incidentally has one of the fastest connections available in the US - and as a result may show 'actual' results (as most servers are located in the US).
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For the more technically-inclined, here is a brief explanation of this bandwidth meter:
We start with a predetermined size of a file - an image in our Internet speed meter - and time the download of this file into your browser. This time is then plotted in a graph showing the instant speed and the averaged calculated speed. This Speed Meter shows at a glance the typical throughput of your connectivity in terms of kilobits per second (and kilobytes per second marked as Characters per second - CPS).
To circumvent the problem of caching by the browser, we use all the tricks we could think of to force the browser to load the data (image) every time you run the bandwidth meter. It is imperative that you use the link at the bottom of the Internet speed meter page to test again. If you click the browser's refresh button, you will end up loading from the cache - which will give a false value - often in excess of a T1 connection.
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This Internet Speed Meter is intended to offer an approximate estimate of your connection speed. There are so many other factors which can affect your apparent Net connection speed.
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