One Tip A Day » Internet

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.

Find Internet Connection Problems with Netalyzr

Umar — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:54:27 +0000

I’m the kind of person who like to be `in the know’ of everything happening around me.

So one of the things I absolutely hate is when my internet connection starts acting erratic or sluggish and I just don’t know why – a call to technical support will usually just give me the usual “oh we’re facing some technical difficulties , don’t worry it’ll be fixed hopefully soon!” and so I’m left in the dark again.

Well not anymore! Netalyzr is a web based application that checks your network connections, runs a bunch of test to try to figure out why you net is working weird, and then compiles a report of those test results along with a color coded `importance chart’ . For example, items in red are critical problems, while items with a green check mark have passed the tests with ease etc.

The fun part is all you really have to do to get a report of your net connection is click on the “Start Analysis” button and NetAnalyzr will do the rest!

Free Websites to help you Avoid Spam

Umar — Thu, 14 May 2009 03:33:09 +0000

It’s really common for a spam bot to easily steal email addresses written on websites and blogs.They collect e-mail addresses from the Internet in order to build mailing lists for sending unsolicited e-maila known as spam. Their purpose is to gather e-mail addresses from Web sites, newsgroups, special-interest group (SIG) postings, and chat-room conversations. Because e-mail addresses have a distinctive format, spambots are easy to write.

Following are some of the free web-services that can help you fight against these kind of bots and avoid spam.

Mailinator

Mailinator is a free disposable email service that promises to protect your identity on the internet. It allows you to easily create an on-the-spot email identity that provides anonymity and fights web inertia in one easy step.

It doesn’t really require any registration and helps thousands of people every day avoid spam. Simply create your free email id that is followed by “@Mailinator” and check your inbox after sharing it with any anonymous person out there.

The company had introduced a feature in March which adds “Alternate Inboxes” to Mailinator and can definitely come in handy. For example, if you check any inbox on Mailinator (say, binkypop), listed on the page is the alternate inbox name. All alternate inbox names start with “M8R-”. For example, for binkypop, the alternate inbox name is M8R-yg1hkn@mailinator.com.

HideText

Another great way to avoid spam is HideText. A free web service that allows you convert text to an image. This means you can easily hide passwords, personal messages, pieces of code, or any kind of private information on forums, blogposts, emails, irc, msn-aim chats. Your text becomes unGoogleable and leaves no traces at all.

Spam Proof Email Generator

Here’s something similar to HideText. Spam Proof Email Generator is considered nothing but a simply program that helps you fight against a Spam Bot that crawls a website and gathers all the email addresses written there. Since they’re are not able to read images and won’t get a chance to copy your email address.

You can easily fool these bots by simply using the form on the website to create a picture of your email address.

Listen To And Record Over 6000 Internet Radio Stations

Tony Williams — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 13:06:07 +0000

I’m amazed that more people don’t listen to Internet Radio. There are literally thousands of free stations available pumping out music 24×7.

A great tool that I’ve just discovered via Digital Alchemy is Nexus Radio, that not only lets you record instantly over 6000 stations, but you can even set it to record your favourite stations or just to record tracks from your favourite artists.

More: Nexus Radio

Useful Firefox Extensions For Website Owners

Tony Williams — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 12:12:17 +0000

I know that I keep going on about Firefox, but it is truly the king of internet browsers. To prove my point, here’s a list of 10 Firefox Extensions For Website Owners.

Although you may say ‘oh no, not another list of Firefox extensions’, in my view because there are so many lists like this are the only way to stay on top of all the amazing Firefox Extensions out there.

Take for instance LinkChecker:

If you run a dynamic site, or built a site from scratch, its very possible you have some dead links after moving things around. This simple extension lets you know if your links on a page are good or bad without having to click around. There are some other better tools out there for checking your entire site for dead links (search for xenu link sleuth), but this allows you to see them at quick glance.

I’ve just installed this extension, and I was stunned to see how many dead links there were on this site. Vital information if you want to hold onto as many potential readers as possible.

Friday Break: Real-life Internet Chatroom

Tony Williams — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:13:24 +0000

Ever wondered what an Internet chat room would look like in real-life? I think this is a very well put together video, which covers a lot of scenarios. I love the old man trying to pretend to be only 13 years old.

We form so many relationships online I sometimes do wonder if I would get on with a lot of my online friends in real-life!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY26nB5ngAc&v3

How To Increase The Number Of Firefox Simultaneous Downloads

Tony Williams — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 11:38:48 +0000

As soon as I spotted this tip on Lyte Byte I had to share it, as it solved a problem with Firefox that has been bugging me for a while now. Firefox has a limit on how many simultaneous files you can download from one server at time, which can be annoying if you’ve got a fast connection that’s just sitting there idle.

Increasing the number of Simultaneous Firefox downloads is easy:

Step 1: Open Firefox and type ‘about:config’ in the address bar
Step 2: Search for ‘network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server’ by entering this in the filter field.

Step 3: by default this would have set to 2, double click and set this digit to a higher number preferably under 10 to increase the simultaneous download limit per server.
If you’re still using Internet Explorer (why??!!) then check out this post to increase the number of simultaneous downloads in IE.

How To Increase Your Internet Speed By 20%

Tony Williams — Sat, 12 May 2007 19:46:41 +0000

If you use Windows XP Professional then it is possible to squeeze an extra 20% out of your internet connection. By default Windows XP Pro holds back 20% of your Internet speed for various services like windows update and spyware checks.

If you want to tap into this locked speed then make the following changes:

Go to Start-> Run-> and type gpedit.msc
Expand the Administrative Templates branch
Expand the Network tab
Highlight QoS Packet Scheduler
Click on Limit Reservable Bandwidth and check the ‘enabled’ box
Then Change the Bandwidth limit % to 0 %

Once you’ve done this click apply and restart your PC. After rebooting you should see a noticeable improvement in your net speed.

Thanks to the Techie Blog for the tip.

Soundpedia: Play Music Albums For Free

Tony Williams — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 20:43:29 +0000

If you’re looking for a free online music jukebox then you should check out Soundpedia.com, that allows you to listen to music and watch music videos in an internet browser. There’s a wide selection of music available and even complete albums are available. Ideal, if you want to try before you buy, or if you just need something to work to.

The layout is very simple and easy to, and Soundpedia features only minimal advertising which is always handy. The range of music available is very broad ranging from MJB, Lloyd and Timbaland to Oasis. Music and videos can be searched by genre, and if available, lyrics can even be displayed whilst the tracks are playing.

To try out Soundpedia click here

AGLOCO – Don’t Miss Out On Getting Paid To Surf

Tony Williams — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 00:19:12 +0000

You’ve probably had one or two emails from close friends and from not so close friends trying to get you to join AGLOCO by now. If you haven’t, then AGLOCO is a new service that will be finally launching this week that allows advertisers to reach you directly while you surf and search the internet, by adding a small toolbar called the Viewbar at the bottom of your browser.

The incentive for users to join is that they not only get paid for their own surfing and searching, but also for any of their friends that they refer. The method by which users actually get cash in their hands seems quite convoluted to me, but given that not a lot has to be done for this to happen I’m prepared to at least give it a go.

To join AGLOCO click here.

Control Your Internet Addiction

Tony Williams — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 21:54:27 +0000

Could you cope without the internet? What do you do when your broadband connection goes down? I think I would find it impossible to go a whole day without logging on which is quite sad.

If you’re not sure if your internet usage has reached dangerous levels yet, then you should take this test which measures the level of your addiction. Based on your score you can decide whether or not you need to take drastic action quick!

The higher your score (I’ll tell you my score later!), the greater your addiction level:

20 – 49 points: You are an average on-line user. You may surf the Web a bit too long at times, but you have control over your usage.
50 -79 points: You are experiencing occasional or frequent problems because of the Internet. You should consider their full impact on your life
80 – 100 points: Your Internet usage is causing significant problems in your life. You should evaluate the impact of the Internet on your life and address the problems directly caused by your Internet usage.

Don’t forget to share your scores. Don’t worry if it’s embarrassingly high – remember you’re amongst friends here!

Join AGLOCO And Get Paid To Use The Internet!

Tony Williams — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 11:18:48 +0000

AGLOCO is a new service that will be launching next month that will allow internet users to get paid directly by advertisers while they surf and search the internet, by adding a small toolbar, the ‘Viewbar’, at the bottom of their browsers.

I think this is a brilliant idea as why should site owners get paid for my usage, and not me?

The incentive for users to join is that they not only get paid for their own surfing and searching, but also for any of their friends that they refer. They also get paid a percentage of what their friends make, so if you manage to signup 10 mates and they also signup 10 each, then you will get paid a share of what 100 people make.

The toolbar will be launched next month, but you can get a headstart now by inviting friends to join your network to make it as big as possible. I’ve signed up as the toolbar is tiny and I won’t even see it. Even if I only use the toolbar to search, I should still be getting a nice payment every month or so.

To join AGLOCO click here.

Reduce Your Bandwidth Bill

Tony Williams — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 20:52:36 +0000

If you’re one of those poor internet users who have to pay by the Megabyte, or have a capped allowance then techbuzz have 5 good tips (and 1 silly tip) for reducing your bandwidth usage, so that you can surf more. I’ve never come across these applications before, because I have an unlimited pipe which in some months downloads obscene amounts of data.

techbuzz’s five tips are:

Onspeed: Download this application to compress text and images before downloading.

FlashBlock Extension: Great firefox extension that will block these bandwidth heavy (and usually annoying) ads

Imglikeopera Extension: Another firefox extension. This one loads images from a cache

Adblock Extension: Blocks annoying ads

Use a email client rather than a webmail client as these can use up a lot of bandwidth

What was the silly tip, I hear you ask? Switch to an unlimited plan

More: techbuzz

Bypass Work And School Firewalls – Use PimpmyIP.com

Tony Williams — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 00:10:44 +0000

It can be annoying sometimes trying to use the internet at work or at school as they can have quite draconian access controls. The easiest way to bypass any controls is to use a proxy site to browse the internet.

Most proxy sites don’t have easy to remember names. If you find remembering the url of a proxy site too hard to do then check out Pimpmyip.com. which not only has a catchy title, but is also well laid out and easy to use.

Download Shockwave Animations

Tony Williams — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 20:55:11 +0000

How many times have you visited a website and seen a cool Shockwave Animation that you wanted to save but you couldn’t?

Quickonlinetips have produced a great little guide with images which will walk you through the process of downloading and saving animations.

To see the full guide follow this link.

Reduce Firefox Memory Usage

Tony Williams — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 12:19:12 +0000

Firefox’s memory leakage problems are well documented. What tends to happen is the longer you browse using Firefox it uses up more and more memory until your PC virtually stips.

This tip from gHacks should reduce Firefox’s memory usage to under 10MB. It’s very simple to implement:

Write ‘about:config’ in your firefox address bar and hit enter
Right click and select ‘new Boolean’
Paste config.trim_on_minimize in the field and hit enter again
Select True from the list
Restart Firefox

Once you’ve done this you should notice a speed improvement on your PC when using Firefox

More: gHacks