How do you know that you are getting the kind of Internet speed from your ISP that you signed up for? Any Internet service provider is going to state two kinds of speed in the service brochure – the speed at which you get your downloads, and how you get to upload. You can’t dismiss the upload part either. You need both kinds of speed working at optimal efficiency for a smoother Internet experience. Did you ever wonder how to test your Internet speed to be able to check those numbers that you were promised when you signed up?
First stop when checking your internet speed would be heading for the control panel page for your router. The exact appearance of the page depends of course on what brand of router you have. Usually, they give you real-time information as to what kind of transfer rates you are experiencing in packets per second. Look at the sticker somewhere on your router that tells you what web address your router is accessed by. Type the number into your browser’s address bar, enter the password, and go to the page that shows up. You should find the basic speed you are experiencing on the whole there.
With that behind, some of the more entertaining ways are. SpeakEasy.net is one of the top sites that let you test your internet speed. They let you pick one of many places across the country as places you would wish to send data to, to check your speed. The moment you press the Test button, a JavaScript animation of a speedometer appears, that shows how much data you’re sending, and the speeds at which it is happening. It can get pretty exciting for the minute or so the test takes. In the end, you get your results – how fast your upload was, and how fast your download was. How do you know your speed was good enough, though? If you have a dial-up connection, usually, your speeds don’t ever cross about 32 kbps. That’s the slowest ever you get, and that’s no good for anything other than e-mail. If you live in the city, you probably have a DSL or cable Internet connection, and your speeds can be anything under 8 Mbps. You’ll need to check your service provider’s documents to see what kind of speed you’re subscribing to.
Doing regular speed tests on your internet is important for many practical reasons. For one, doing regular speed tests allows you to gauge whether your quoted speed is delivered to you. If you were initially quoted with a download speed of up to 12 Mbps and an upload speed of up to 1 Mbps, make sure that this is delivered constantly and consistently even after your first few months of subscription have elapsed. It is one way to check that you are getting what you paid for. If after several tests you find that the internet speed you are getting is below the given quotation of 12 Mbps for download and 1 Mbps for upload, you can report it directly to the company for troubleshooting.
With constant internet speed tests, you know where the delays or the problems with your connection are coming from. After a year of good and fast internet connection, you might find yourself surprised that from a 10M Mbps download speed, your download speed went down to 2.
There are many factors that can cause this drastic change to happen. First, you can attribute it to the number of people currently living in your household. If there is traffic on your home network, the connection speed will naturally be affected. Second, it is also possible that your internet speed is affected by the hardware and the software configuration that you currently have in your computer. Third, if you are loading a particular text and image-heavy website, the problem is not the internet speed that you have, but the many elements you are waiting to load on your browser.
Likewise, if the server speed of the website you are visiting is particularly slow, that can also affect the website loading and viewing experience. However, if after a quick broadband speed test you discover that your download and upload speeds decreased significantly, then you know with confidence that the cause of your internet speed to slow down is coming from your internet service provider.
Lastly, doing regular internet speed tests is important because the reliability of your internet connection matters a lot. Regardless if your internet speed is annoyingly slow, what is most important is to have a connection that is uninterrupted and present throughout. Especially if you rely on your internet connection for your business or your freelance tasks, it is important to have a reliable internet connection followed by speed if you want to work on your communication requirements and deliverable as efficient as possible.
If you want to know how fast your internet connection is, there are a lot of websites that offer free internet speed tests that yield accurate assessments. See how your connection measures up, and call your internet service provider for any inconsistencies.
