The new and improved bandwidth speed test!

[thehtownpoption]

Originally posted by Joeiss
Communications : 503.2 kilobits per second

Storage : 61.4 kilobytes per second

1MB download file : 16.7 seconds


Crap compared to all of you, but great compared to the rest of the world.


Oh, BTW, is it because my computer is CRAP that my test isn't that good? Or is it my Internet provider? I use Rogers Cable in Toronto.

It could be either one making it slower, though maybe not for the test. For regular internet traffic where you have to load lots of text and graphics and such, if you have a slow computer and/or very little RAM, you might not get as fast as you possibly can.

For example, I have cable on my pretty powerful computer and it's pretty much lightning fast surfing. But when I used the internet on my parent's computer, which only had 32MB (which we've since upgraded to like 256), it might as well have been 56k internet it was so bad. Now with the more memory we put in it surfs much much faster, though it seems not as fast as mine probably because it's only a 200MHz machine.

The same thing happened when I used to play Age of Empires 2 online all the time, which was before I got my computer and before we got cable. If I played it on my parents' computer (which then ran much faster than the example from above I think because the hard drive is really cluttered), it would run fairly fast online. But as I got further in the game where everyone had 200 units each running around, the lag became excrutiatingly obvious. However, when I played on a faster computer at my mom's work, which used essentially the same 56k connection, everything, from the beginning to the end of the game, was considerably faster. So much faster that I often went up there at night just to play the game.

So, yeah, it could definitely be your computer if it really sucks. But it may not affect anything for this test. For example, though my parents' computer was slow for surfing, I seem to remember it being just as fast as mine when it came to straight downloading files or programs. So... I dunno for sure.