Speed testing an internet connection

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

cachefly.net 100mb.test

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.