One Tip A Day » Broadband speed test

How To Improve Mobile Broadband Performance

Tony Williams — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:21:39 +0000

Usage of mobile broadband has accelerated over the last year, with everyone using their mobiles and laptops on the move to surf, send email, tweet and catchup with friends on facebook to name but a few activities. However, must of us have learnt that mobile broadband speeds can be awful in certain areas and can seem worse than using old dialup modems when you see the actual speeds using broadband speed test.

Still, you can improve your mobile broadband experience by following the tips below:

Check If Coverage Is Good At Your Location

Before you travel, check out the coverage for your network in that location e.g. for AT&T you can use their coverage viewer which quickly allows you to see if data coverage is good or bad :

Make Sure You Understand What Speeds You’ll Really Get

You’ll never get a 50mbps speed with mobile broadband, but how fast will it be really? Rather than be disappointed before you commit to a monthly contract test out a pre-pay or PAYG contract to see if the speeds match your expectations.

Positioning & A Better Aerial

Simply moving your aerial a few degrees, or even better sitting in a different place can make a huge difference to your reception quality. Even better, if you can buy an antenna booster for your USB modem. Make sure the antenna booster you buy is portable though, as some are designed to be used at home and wall-mounted – a bit too big to carry in your briefcase!

How to Check The Quality of your Internet Connection

Umar — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:35:20 +0000

To find the speed of your internet connections, you can use a number of free websites including this broadband speed test. These websites first ask you to choose a server; then they proceed to send data back and forth to the server from your computer. This way your download and upload speeds are both calculated.

While the speed calculating is certainly useful, it doesn’t necessarily reveal the quality of your connection. It doesn’t specify what services will run best on your connection and what won’t.

To find those, more useful details about your internet connection, visit Pingtest.

Pingtest is a website that lets you choose a global server and run some connection tests.

The first is a Packet Loss percentage test. ‘Packets’ are pieces of information which are transferred from the server to your system. If the packet loss percentage is greater than zero, then your connection needs to be looked into.

The second is the highly common Ping test; it is used to send packets of information to a server and check the round-trip time it takes i.e. time taken to the server and back. If you’ve chosen a recommended server by Pingtest, any good connection should give a ping test result of less than 100ms.

Ping tests can exhibit variation in their patterns. For instance running the ping test twice on the same server may give you a 32ms result difference. This variation is known as jitter. The lower the jitter, the better your connection. So the third internet test Pingtest runs is the Jitter test which calculates the jitter in your internet connection.

After running all these tests your internet connection is categorized in one of five categories; here’s how Pingtest has named and explained the categories:

Category A: “An excellent result! Expect all Internet applications to work very well assuming you have sufficient bandwidth.”
Category B: “Very good! Your connection should work well for any Internet application. Some online games may not perform optimally.”
Category C: “Acceptable. Your VoIP quality will suffer some, and you will have a disadvantage in many online games. Most streaming media will be fine. You should try testing again to another server close to you.”
Category D: “Concerning. Most online applications will not perform well but should function in some capacity. Try testing to other servers to verify the result. You might need to contact your ISP for help.”
Category F: “Very poor. Real-time Internet application performance will suffer greatly on such a connection. Test to other servers to confirm the result, but definitely talk to your ISP about troubleshooting the issue.”

Pingtest is a great tool from the same people behind the highly popular Speedtest. If ever in doubt about your internet connection quality, head on over to Pingtest to confirm or subside your fears.

Free Broadband Speed Test

Tony Williams — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 11:24:43 +0000

All broadband ISPs are not the same, and the speed you can receive from each ISP can fluctuate wildly.

If you want to see your ISP is actually giving you the speed that you are paying for, then check out my new Broadband Speed Test below, which in seconds will allow you to see if you are getting the broadband speed you deserve!

Using The Test

Start the test by clicking the big button in the center of the page. The test first starts by downloading a file and measures how long it takes. After the download is finished the speed checker tries to upload a file and measures your upload speed.

If you want to get accurate results then you should not use your internet connection for any other applications once the speed checker is running, and run the test a few times so that an average speed can be calculated.

The broadband speed is measured in Kbps (kilobits per second). Approximately 1000 Kbps is 1Mb/s.

Broadband Speed Test

Get your own broadband speed checker

Are you happy or sad with your Broadband Speed Test Results? Don’t forget to leave a comment below to share your results so that other readers can see which ISPs are good and which aren’t.