speed test

Internet Speed Tests

I was just playing around a bit the other day and opened the Windscribe Pro VPN, installed a new version, and wanted to see how it affected my internet download speed on wifi. As expected, it slowed my connection speed down some, and this is the price one must pay for the security from eavesdropping and hacking when on a wifi network, especially a public wifi network.

Now, I don't need a VPN on my home network -- I was just playing and checking things out. As part of this, I checked several speed test websites, which I list below. Resulting download Mbps varied considerably between the different tests. Which was more accurate? Darned if I know, but the speed of my accessing the internet is acceptable, so I don't worry about what the actual speed might be.

In case you might want to do some checking yourself, here are the websites I used.

Jim Hamm

http://www.speedtest.net/run

https://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

http://speedtest.att.com/speedtest/

https://www.spectrum.com/internet/speed-test.html

https://www.cox.com/residential/support/internet/speedtest.html

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Testing Your Internet Connection

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        Here's some food for thought from Jim Hamm:  "Do you occasionally like to test your internet connection to see if you're getting close to the download speed you're paying for? I do, too. One test you might try using is: http://speedof.me/ .

        "This one relies strictly on HTML 5 and no Flash or Java is needed. It will work on just about any smartphone, tablet or computing device. You might give it a try." 
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Increasing Your Speed

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        This morning's news headline, "Valley Chosen to Test Fast Wireless Network" was an attention-getter.  Check it out here.  Compare prices, services, etc. with a link to SpeedTest.  The numbers are interesting.  Anyone trying out Google Chrome to see if it's faster and better?  Slow is out, and fast is in.  Keep us posted.
        Now we hear from David Passell,  "The aritcle does not appear to apply for up here. However, Commspeed says they have ordered towers, etc. for WiMax (3 - 6 mbs.) No idea if they will charge more. For more details go to commspeed.net.
        "Cableone at present says that 10Mbps can be had for $53.00 a month, and that is not an 'introductory offer.'
        "Qwest is somewhat difficult to pin down (DSL) because of their weasel-worded advertisements. On closer inquiry I found that no matter what I could spend, I would be limited to around 1.5 Mbps because fiber optic service is not yet available where I live. They always like to present best case in the ads 'your results may differ.'
       " I installed Chrome, and I couldn't see any difference. I also found it so much different from the other three browsers I use (Firefox, Opera, and Safari (which also claims to be a much faster browser than the other two) that I didn't want to mess with another learning curve. Perhaps that speed advantage would only show up if my ISP were in the higher Mb range. Commspeed wireless currently pokes along at around 1 - 1.5Mbps. I principally use Opera or Firefox because of their multi-line bookmark and tab lines.
        David's conclusion, "I personally wish that the concept of 'information belongs to the people' would be applied in this country as it is in Finland. There the government has the concept that every citizen has a right to high speed internet access, and is taking the steps to make it so. That is something like the former communications philosophy 'the airwaves belong to the people' where anyone could listen to a broadcast. We didn't have active but unseen agencies (and the government) trying to manipulate systems so everyone would have to pay somebody something for the 'privilege' of receiving content; and no fair skipping commercials:(."

Speed Test Link

David Passell tells about a speed tester.  He reports, " I went over to Best Buy to look at the iPAD and other Mac machines. For fun, I ran some speed tests. Their net was around 4MB. Then I found another speed tester that I thought was interesting. I tried it on my machine, both XP (under Parallels which I finally bought) and OS X. Strangely, the speed measured faster on XP than OS. Both were using the Firefox browser. Here is the link. Try it you might like it."