Testing Your DSL

First we had the dialup connection, now we have broadband. These broadband connections (DSL, Cable or Satellite), make dialup connection seem like your grandmom driving a super slow car. Broadband internet services popularity is because of its high bandwidth. The reason a lot of people get broadband is because providers promise a speedy connection.

But how do you know if you are getting your money's worth of broadband service? There are two ways to test your DSL speed. One is manually calculating which you can do yourself without the need of speed test softwares or websites. Connection speed is comprised of upload and download speed, and you can test it by first trying to download any free software from the internet. While doing this, be aware of how long it took to download a specific size of file. After knowing the download speed, try uploading a file with a definite size. Time the whole process and record it. The upload speed is the file size divided by the seconds it took to upload it. Do this a couple of times to get the average.

If you are too lazy to manually check your speed connection yourself, there are websites that offer free speed tests. These sites let you upload and download to their servers (which has installed scripts) a trial file and the outcome can be viewed on their webpage. So don't just settle for the numbers the service providers give you. Run the tests yourself and see if you really are paying for quality amenity.