Does it ever seem as though
the web is slow, even though you dialed-up several times until you
finally logged on at 44,000? Well, that's because the 44,000 is
only the speed at which your modem will "talk" to your ISP or
service provider's modem. It does not have any relationship
to the speed at which their system will transfer data to and from the
world wide web. (The data transfer is called throughput.)
So how do you know if you have a connection
that will yield good throughput? Use
Modem
Speed Test Page1 and Modem
Speed Test Page2. Clicking either link
will open a new window that will show you how your present connection is doing
(by downloading a picture then displaying a graph of your throughput). (Save these
pages to your favorites, and create shortcuts on your desktop, on your
Quick Launch bar, or on your Office Shortcut Bar.) (Click
the "Repeat the Test" button a few times , as the first one is
sometimes not representative.) When I was on dialup, whenever I'd log on,
I'd visit these pages. If after about three dial-ups I could not get
over 4000cps on Page1, I'd take whatever, so long as whatever I got was close
to 3400. This is mediocre, but if that's all you can get....
The best I got when I had dialup at home was about 4500. I
got a throughput of 4500 with connection speeds as low as 28,800, and
when logged on at 44,000 I got speeds as low as 340! The
best I have seen on dialup is 5500.
If memory serves, when I had DSL I got around 58,000 on Page1,
and around 105,000 on Page2. One my current Cable, at first I got
around 80,000 on Page1 and 116,000. (These tests are not
definitive*, but they it seem to give one a good idea, and they are
simple & quick.) There was recently an upgrade to my cable
service that was said to be "up to double the speed".
One these tests it was minimal - Page2 went from 106,000 to 116,000. However, big downloads such as tech manuals or MP3
files, went from 150-200 KB/Sec to 175-300 KB/Sec. 300 is really
moving.) When I got a new computer, the speed increased
dramatically. Later, another cable upgrade took the speed to over
2,000,000. When I got another new computer, it went to over
3,000,000! With service this good, I think it's the rest of the
world that's the holdup when I get a slow download.