This is a just a quick one this morning before I head out to do some fishing. 
Many times people say that their internet connection is slow. So testing to the point where the fiber gets out of the system and into the world beyond can be very helpful. In my case, it is a matter of testing to NYC or Washington DC depending on where I am at the moment. So periodically I will run tests to one of those two places. Speakeasy just so happens to be in a common physical location for me and gives good results in an overall kind of way. That’s why I added the button to the sidebar. So instead of remembering where I put the *&%@ link, I can just do it here. Maybe it will be helpful to you, maybe not. But I do know it will be helpful to me.
Now, off to do some fishing. Happy Birthday to me! As they say, a bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work…
Happy Birthday, Mr. Cable Man! Sorry I missed the party, it has been that kind of day today.
Speed Test tool? I don’t need a speed test tool to tell me how crappy my connection to the Internet is, all I need is to try to view a music video and suffer the half an hour it takes to load it up!
Yet, they have no shame to call this broadband!
Poor JdS, having to suffer from a substandard connection. Do they actually hand carry the info in a basket and deliver it to your house?
If I remember correctly the server is in SF, CA. I almost (but not quite) hate to brag on our system.
From MD system to SanFrancisco:
Download Speed: 7894 kbps (986.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 364 kbps (45.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
That’s my slow modem. The one I have at home is provisioned for better speeds as a test site. On that one I can get between 900 and 1100 kbps upstream. Down is a little bit faster (about 10K).
Maybe I am a little bit spoiled.
Thanks for the birthday wishes! I ended up getting about a dozen croakers. The big trip is tomorrow for rockfish and then croakers with five of my friends on a charter. I will definately post some pictures after that trip.
Wow! Look at those numbers! When I download a file off this server to my PC, I am lucky if I can download them at the rate of about 20KB/second, and I am paying for a 1 Mbps connection! What a rip-off… but what can I do, this is how it is here in Malaysia, the land of the corrupted and incompetent monopolies.
What do you do with “a dozen croakers”, on your birthday?
It’s fun reading about your fishing excursions like this, at least now I know about goodeids, croakers, and that rockfish is just another name for the striped bass.
Trust me, I wouldn’t have gone out looking for this information myself.
This is creepy weird. Just yesterday I was interested in my connection speed and ended up choosing SpeakEasy as my speed tester.
My test shows Time Warner Oceanic as giving me about 4.7Mbs DL and 363Kbs UL. However, it often doesn’t feel like that, especially if I’m downloading a new Linux ISO or other large file.
Often the connection here in Hawaii is so bad that my download speed drops from ~100kbs to 12kbs as I watch it. I usually have to babysit the connection, pausing it every few minutes and starting over to make sure it doesn’t take me several days to get a file.
One the the big things to remember about Cable Modems is that it is like a physically large LAN. You can test for speed to your hearts content but if all of your neighbors that operate on the same fiber node’s return decide to start leaning on their connections, your potential bandwidth will be reduced accordingly.
The amount of bandwidth you have at your disposal therefore will most likely be different at different times of the day. We see this when kids get home from school and all start playing their favorite online game. Or downloading mass amounts of music. Whatever it may be.
Of course, you will always be at the mercy of the server your information is coming from as I’m sure you are aware. I see it often when updating CygWin from a mirror and get terrible speeds. That has no real bearing on your connection but is a common factor for what users see as a slowdown.
If you are really curious I could write up an article that details the specifics of how information gets from you computer to the internet. Actually, I guess I should do that anyhow. Someone might find it interesting.
JdS, your ISP has a place to test your connection. Have you ever tried it? There were choices for a few different locations and the type of connection. I wonder if it’s accurate.