Posts Tagged ‘ADSL’

If you only really use your broadband connection to surf a few basic web pages, then connection speed probably isn’t all that important. If on the otherhand, you send and receive hundreds of e-mails and regularly need to upload or download large files etc… it’s absolutely essential (especially when you have multiple users sharing a connection).

As you may have read recently, many broadband suppliers (also known as ‘ISPs or ‘internet service providers’) advertise connection speeds of up to 8mbps (mega bits per second) yet often customers do not actually get this level of service. To us, that’s a bit like advertising a sports car that does up to 100mph when in fact, on most drives, it won’t top 60!

If you’re about to come to the end of your broadband contract (or you’re simply curious about the actual speed of your connection) then you might want to head over to www.speedtest.net

Once you’re at the site, simply click on the yellow pyramid nearest to your geographical location, and watch the large ’speedometer’ calculate your speed (you may want to try this at different times of day to see if it varies). If you are on an network within an office, then remember that the results may also vary according to internet usage by your colleagues.

Once you have your result, you can compare this against other broadband providers in your region, town, county etc.

We use a company called Newnet, which is both reasonably priced, and (in our experience) reliable too. Perhaps most importantly, we actually get the close to the speed advertised (on our case, about 7kbps verses an advertised speed of 8kbps).