Saturday, August 11, 2012

Are You Getting the Internet Speed You’re Paying for?

Recently I’ve seen an unusual number of clients complaining that their computers are running many of their browsers based online programs very slow or even having them freeze up and fail to respond along with increased problems with programs and requests being timed out by servers. As in the past these problems have been traced in every case to poor internet speeds from their ISP’s. With some of the speeds as much as 60% to 70% less than those promised. And in every case once the provider was contacted repairs were made and speeds were restored to the ISP’s promised speed. Sadly problems with consistent internet service speed seems to be an ever increasing problem as rising costs and reduced budgets have hit ISP’s hard. Throw in the ever increasing demand caused by a customer base that uses more and more data resource intensive web services like video and SAAS and you have a recipe for terrible ISP speeds. Anyway if you’ve had any problem with your internet response recently be sure to do a speed check on your ISP connection. Luckily this isn’t something that requires any great skill as there are many good sites and services that will check both your download and you’re upload speed quickly, easily, and for free. Remember you should run these tests over several days and at different times as speeds often vary greatly through the course of the day and you want your ISP’s stated speed all the time not just part of the time. Also the download speed will be much faster than the upload speed for almost all ISP’s so be sure to find out what your upload speed should be and watch it as well as your download speed. And be aware that due to some technical issues, you won’t get exactly the speeds your ISP states but your results should be well within 10-20% of your promised speeds. So do yourself a favor and check your ISP’s download and upload speeds and be sure you’re getting what you’re paying for. Two sites Megapath internet speed test and Speedtest.net are the ones that I recommend most often. So give them a try and let me know how your tests come out and if you have a favorite internet tip or tool to share please post it in the comment box below.