How do I conduct a perfomance test of my internet connection?

Question

Right now I'm in the process of possibly switching from a Cable provider to a DSL provider. I have both connections live, and before I cancel one or the other, I'm wanting to do some exhaustive testing of the internet connection. I have three major questions:

1. What are some approaches that I can quantitatively test the speeds (both up and down) and quality of my internet connections (ping, time connection is down, etc,.)?
2. Are there other consideration that should be taken when testing an internet connection?
3. Are there any tools that can do this automatically and capture results?

Note: if you decide to suggest a piece of software, please follow these guidelines in doing so. Also I'm looking to be able to save any data from the software for detailed analysis and comparison

Overall, I'm looking to compare the two connections over multiple periods of time such as peak hours (1600 - 2100 in my area), and with different loads such as streaming movies, uploading files, etc,.

Answer 1

The Broadband Tests and Tools from DSLReports.com include a simple speed test, as well as long- and short-term line quality tests:

• Speed Tests

  Test your maximum upload speed and download speed from several geographically distributed locations.
  Java, Flash and iPhone speed test (100% browser) available.

• Smokeping

  Intensively monitor an IP address for 24 or more hours to review packet loss and/or excessive latency variability -- from three different US locations

• Line Quality - Ping Test

  Test latency, jitter and packet loss to your IP address, including identification of any problems en-route to you.

The speed test requires Flash or Java; the other two require that your IP is pingable.

In the absence of a specialized tool for long-term speed tests, you could use a command-line network retriever (e.g. Wget or Wget for Windows) and download uncompressable test files with a shell/batch script.

The nearest test files to Arizona I could find are from speedtest.dal01.softlayer.com (Dallas, TX) and speedtest.sea01.softlayer.com (Seattle, WA).

Answer 2

I've only ever used the online tests like:

• Speakeasy SpeedTest

• Speedtest.net

Most of the online tests use Flash (which makes it impossible to run from iOS devices). Some of them offer user accounts to record and track runs at different times and in your case with different providers. The other downside is that they only provide a basic upload/download metric (and sometimes ping) and not more details statistics.

Answer 3

Adding to the other answers: there is also ICSI Netalyzr.

It tests/debugs your Internet connection for a lot of things. Also, you're contributing to Stanford's research on Internet quality.

See their FAQ. It uses the Java plugin.

Answer 4

Also, a GLASNOST test can tell you if the ISP is messing with your connection.

http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/bttest.php

Answer 5

If you are serious about wanting an accurate test of your broadband performance which runs permanently and the results can be viewed via a web based dashboard you could volunteer to install a free SamKnows whitebox which plugs into your router and runs permanent tests. I have one and am not technical by any means, but it was easy to install and the results are very easy to understand. For more info go to www.samknows.com. Hope this helps!