Well, there are a few ways to check the upload / Download speed of an internet connection, one way is speedtest.net which uses flash to download a file, and upload a file, both to a server close to you
On systems where we do not have a browser or do not have a browser that supports flash, one can download a file (With wget on Linux for example), the quest would be this
You will need a file that is hosted on a network that you know for fact is faster than your own internet connection, for me, i have been using this one very successfully
So, on a LINUX system, entering
wget http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
On a casual 2.4Mb (That’s Mega Bit not Byte) , it should result in something like this
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --2012-04-19 11:41:09-- http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test Resolving cachefly.cachefly.net... 140.99.93.175 Connecting to cachefly.cachefly.net|140.99.93.175|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream] Saving to: `100mb.test' 6% [=> ] 6,897,290 284K/s eta 5m 41s ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
While on a much faster connection i have somewhere else (theoretical 100Mb), the results are like this
--2012-04-19 08:44:20-- http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test Resolving cachefly.cachefly.net... 140.99.93.175 Connecting to cachefly.cachefly.net|140.99.93.175|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream] Saving to: `100mb.test' 100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 41.2M/s in 2.4s 2012-04-19 08:44:22 (41.2 MB/s) - `100mb.test' saved [104857600/104857600]
There are also other factors in internet connection speed that i will get to soon, for example, latency, and efficient routing.
things that i will get to when i have the time.