[X-Unix] CPU speed

[William H. Magill]

On 04 Jan, 2005, at 16:52, Brent Baisley wrote:
> That's not testing your connection speed, it's testing your browser 
> speed. Any bandwidth test should give you your bandwidth, not how much 
> time it takes to perform a certain task. Google for broadband speed 
> test.
> Here's a quick one:
> http://www.bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/
>
> That reported 1.3MB for me. I'm on a T1, which is 1.4MB. So that is 
> accurate considering overhead.
>
> Cable is 10MB shared, your DSL is most certainly not that fast, 
> although it is not shared. At least until it gets to the switching 
> station. The more people that get cable modems in your sons 
> neighborhood, the slower his connection will get since more people are 
> sharing the same bandwidth.

To the best of my knowledge, the fastest consumer Cable modem 
connection is only about 3meg.

While 10 meg is theoretical, most all cable companies (like Comcast) 
throttle it down to 3 meg unless you pay for their "business" service.

Personall, I use Broadband reports.
        http://www.broadbandreports.com/

select tests and tool in the left frame; scroll down to the bottom of 
the page (to the JAVA based tools section) to "speed tests."
They just reorganized things and you can now apparently get there 
directly:
        http://speedtest.broadbandreports.com

Your test results will vary widely depending upon the location of the 
testing server, and the relative backbone traffic.

I just ran a pair of tests at 23:30 EST -- one to NJ and one to CA... 
I'm located in Philadelphia.

To NJ, I      get 1439 / 308 -- basically the rated speed of my DSL 
line (A 179.8 KB/sec transfer rate.) However, to CA, I only get  284 / 
236 -- (A 35.6 KB/sec transfer rate.)

Note: at the bottom of the test page, there are links to a couple of 
white papers:
     http://www.broadbandreports.com/speed
Pretty well covers all of the issues effecting network speed.

BTW, this was with 10.3.7 and Safari via a dual-port Airport Base 
Station, to my iMac.


T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
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