Online Internet Speed Test
Testing your internet speed is most useful when you feel that you are experiencing an internet slow down or perhaps you are just curious to see how your internet connection is currently performing. You can now test your internet connection speed online via our Online Internet Speed Test. This online internet speed test will automatically measure the download and upload speeds that your internet connection is capable of achieving. (Need Help?)
Optimize Your Internet Connection
Did you know that while the theoretical maximum transfer speed of your Internet & Network Connection cannot be changed except by upgrading your hardware or Internet Subscription, our free software, Internet Cell Boost can effectively increase the performance of your existing configuration. Click here to find out more.
Internet Connection Speeds (Bandwidth) Explained
I have a 2 Megabit
connection but I don’t download at speeds of 2
Megabytes per second. Why?
Keep in mind that the Internet service providers
declare speed in bits per second as opposed to bytes
per second. So suppose you have a
DSL connection running at 2 Mbit/s download speed. The first
thing to do is to multiply that number by 1,000 so
we transform Megabits per second into Kilobits per
second. After that we need to divide the obtained
number by 8 because we are now talking
about data storage and therefore 1 Kilobit must be
equal to 1 Kilobyte.
Calculations:
So 2 Mbit/s x 1,000 = 2000 Kbit/s
Finally 2000 Kbit/s ÷ 8 = 250 KB/s
200 KB/s is equal to 15 MB/min and 0.90 GB/h, so if you have a 2 Megabit connection you can expect a file of 700 MBs to take approximately 48 minutes in order to download completely. Having said that however, download and upload speeds may widely vary from ISP to ISP, from website to website and even from day to day! Please continue reading the following information in order to understand more about Internet Connection Speeds (also referred to as Bandwidth).
Due to handshaking
negotiation procedures between your computer and the
place of transfer,
you will generally experience a "slow start" (which
will slightly effect the download times).
Common Internet Connection Speeds:
256 Kbit/s = 32 KB/s
512 Kbit/s = 64 KB/s
1 Mbit/s = 125 KB/s
2 Mbit/s = 250 KB/s
8 Mbit/s = 1000 KB/s or 1 MB/s
10 Mbit/s = 1,250 KB/s or 1.25 MB/s
50 Mbit/s = 6,250 KB/s or 6.25 MB/s
All download managers, P2P software and web browsers report download and upload speeds in KB/s and MB/s while Internet Service Providers report download and upload speeds in Kbit/s and Mbit/s. For this very fact we have designed our online internet speed test to measure your download and upload speeds into both Kbit/s and Mbit/s as well as KB/s and MB/s. This will avoid you the need to make any calculations in order to convert between our reported speeds and the ones stated by your Internet Service Provider and software programs.
Difference between download
and upload speeds:
Downloading is the process of copying files from a remote location
to your computer. A download happens whenever you load a webpage, view an
image, watch a YouTube clip or download files from a server to your computer.
Uploading on the other hand is the process of
copying files from your computer to a remote
location. One
should note that generally online communication and
transfer applications such as chatting, VoIP and
online gaming include both downloads and uploads transfers,
so the upload speed is not something that should be
ignored.
What is Bandwidth and how
does this effect my Internet Connection's speed?
Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be
transferred over your Internet Connection at a
current point in time. It therefore is a good
measure of the channel capacity of a communications
link. The bandwidth can be affected by a wide
variety of factors such as; network congestions (on
weekends for example Internet Connection speeds tend to be lower due to high network
congestion), server load, line quality, distance
from exchange (for ADSL/ADSL2+), technology used,
hardware capabilities, server routing, software configurations and
even downloads / uploads that you or any user on
your home, work or public network currently have in progress.
The theoretical maximum
transfer speed of your Internet & Network Connection
cannot be changed except by upgrading your hardware
or Internet Subscription.
The distance between your
home and the nearest telephone exchange
will have a great impact on your bandwidth for
ADSL/ADSL2+.
How does our Online Internet Speed
Test measure your current Bandwidth?
Our online internet speed test calculates the
bandwidth of
your internet connection by measuring the time it
takes for your computer to download a predefined file from our
servers, and then uploading "part" of the same file that
you downloaded back to our servers.
What does the Ping value
reported by our Online Internet Speed Test mean?
A ping test determines whether your
computer can communicate with another computer over
the internet or network. Once a communication
is established the ping test determines the
connection latency (technical term for delay or
"lag") between the two computers. A lower ping
(which is measured in milliseconds) is preferred
because it means that it is taking less time for the
two computers to communicate with each other. Ping
has a significant impact on VoIP and online gaming.
Our online internet speed test takes several ping
"readings" and reports the average ping.
And what about the Jitter
value?
Once you understand ping, jitter should
also make sense. Jitter is merely the measure of how
much a ping value varies over a period of time. A
Jitter value of zero means that "readings" of each ping were
exactly the same every time a ping test was made. While
it is normal to expect some jitter over the
Internet, the lower the jitter the better because it
means that your internet connection is quite stable.
What is a Web Browser, and
what browsers are available?
Surfing the web (and reading this text!) is only
made possible by web browsers. Web browsers are
software programs that allow you to view various
kinds of information that is available on the
internet such as; websites, images,
video clips and much more. Popular web browsers include
Internet Explorer,
Firefox,
Chrome,
Opera and
Safari.
Our online internet speed test will automatically
detect what web browser you are currently making use
of.
What is an IP Address?
An IP Address is designed to allow one computer (or
any other network-capable device) to communicate
with another over the internet or a network. IP
Addresses allow computer to be pin-pointed and
differentiated from all the others. Our online
internet speed test will automatically detect what
IP Address is currently assigned to your computer.
