How fast is my Internet connection speed? |
| by Oscar Sodani | |
| October 24, 2006 | |
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When you buy an Internet connection, they will usually tell you how fast you are supposed to be connecting. But how can you be sure you are getting the bandwidth you paid for? A 56K modem connection is rarely, if ever over 48K. A 2Mbps cable modem connection may be much slower than that in real-time. And when you get into faster cable, DSL, or fiber-optic connections, real world speeds will differ from you buy. So how can you test the speed of your Internet connection?
There are lots of web sites out there that will test your Internet connection. Your best bet is to try several, because if you have a very fast connection, your results may vary by how far the web site's server is from your home/Internet provider. An important thing to keep in mind is that bandwidth is measured in kilobits per second (kbps) - one bit is simply a binary 0 or 1, so transferring one kilobit means that you transferred 1000 0s or 1s. One megabit per second (Mbps) means roughtly 1,000,000 0s or 1s transferred every second. However, when you normally think of the size of files, you are not thinking in terms of kilobits or megabits - you think in terms of kilobytes (KB) or megabytes (MB). Since it takes 8 bits to make up a byte, you should divide the speed of your connection in bits per second by 8 to get a real-world idea of how long it would take to transfer a file. An example: I have a 1 Mbps internet connection. I have a 10 megabyte file that I would like to download. Will it take 10 seconds? No. Because of the difference between bits and bytes, it will take longer. A 10 megabyte file is actually comprised of roughtly 80 megabits. So, with a 1 megabit-per-second connection, it should take roughly 80 seconds to transfer the file. If you are completely confused, check out our tutorial on bits and bytes. Speed Testing Websites
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