How To Measure My Real Internet Speed ?

[bangkokcitylimits]

Just testing this new tool netlimiter.com it looks very good, but not clear how to use it.

NetLimiter is an ultimate internet traffic control and monitoring tool designed for Windows. You can use NetLimiter to set download/upload transfer rate limits for applications or even single connection and monitor their internet traffic.

So, I'm using the CAT CDMA mobile router, this says I get 3.1 MB/s speed, but I doubt if this is true.

The Networx monitor says it's 230KB, what is this ?

Anyway when downloading movies I get a graph that looks like the skyline of the Swiss Alps (with 3bb there were a lot of valleys in between) while last year with CAT that was a straight line on 3,1 MB/s.

How do I figure out what is the actual speed, not just the usage monitoring ?

Edited October 3, 2010 by bangkokcitylimits

[sulasno]

have to do some calculations;

1 MB (1 Mega Bytes) = 1024 Bytes1B (1 Byte) = 8 bits

(note the capital B and small letter

[bangkokcitylimits]

have to do some calculations;

1 MB (1 Mega Bytes) = 1024 Bytes1B (1 Byte) = 8 bits

(note the capital B and small letter

not clear what you exactly mean...

Edited October 3, 2010 by bangkokcitylimits

[lomatopo]

Maybe try file transfer? These speedtest sites seem pretty worthless, and not particularly reliable, repeatable, accurate or reflective of real-world applications?

I have a 4 Mega-bits per second downstream line from TOT.

Edited October 3, 2010 by lomatopo

[Pib]

have to do some calculations;

1 MB (1 Mega Bytes) = 1024 Bytes1B (1 Byte) = 8 bits

(note the capital B and small letter

not clear what you exactly mean...

Your first chart was reporting Mega "Bits" not Mega "Bytes." 8 bits equlas 1 byte. 3.1Mbps (as in bits) is the same as 387.5KB (as in bytes). Your second chart said you had a 230 kbit connection (as in bits) which equals 28.75KB (as in bytes). Don't know what the All Connections byte results on the second chart mean.

Summary: 8 bits equals 1 byte. A lower case "b" means bits; an upper case "B" means bytes. Seems internet speed programs vary between how they report the results, as to whether they report in Bits or Bytes. Most of the time they report in bits as that is how the Internet Service Providers (ISP) market their internet package. That is, 4 MegaBits/Second, 12 MegaBits/Second, etc.

[bangkokcitylimits]

have to do some calculations;

1 MB (1 Mega Bytes) = 1024 Bytes1B (1 Byte) = 8 bits

(note the capital B and small letter

not clear what you exactly mean...

Your first chart was reporting Mega "Bits" not Mega "Bytes." 8 bits equlas 1 byte. 3.1Mbps (as in bits) is the same as 387.5KB (as in bytes). Your second chart said you had a 230 kbit connection (as in bits) which equals 28.75KB (as in bytes). Don't know what the All Connections byte results on the second chart mean.

Summary: 8 bits equals 1 byte. A lower case "b" means bits; an upper case "B" means bytes. Seems internet speed programs vary between how they report the results, as to whether they report in Bits or Bytes. Most of the time they report in bits as that is how the Internet Service Providers (ISP) market their internet package. That is, 4 MegaBits/Second, 12 MegaBits/Second, etc.

So, an advertisement like below actually is about BITS in stead of BYTES ??

[Pib]

Corrrect, 10 Million Bits versus 10 Million Bytes (10 Million Bytes would be 80 Million Bits). Also notice that 3BB even used the lower case "b" (i.e., Mb) in their ad. Cheers.

[bangkokcitylimits]

Corrrect, 10 Million Bits versus 10 Million Bytes (10 Million Bytes would be 80 Million Bits). Also notice that 3BB even used the lower case "b" (i.e., Mb) in their ad. Cheers.

So if I understand well, 1MB internet, 3MB 5, 10, 20MB etc. does not exist ? (for normal users)

[innerspace]

Corrrect, 10 Million Bits versus 10 Million Bytes (10 Million Bytes would be 80 Million Bits). Also notice that 3BB even used the lower case "b" (i.e., Mb) in their ad. Cheers.

So if I understand well, 1MB internet, 3MB 5, 10, 20MB etc. does not exist ? (for normal users)

1MB certainly exists but it is advertised as 8Mb.

Internet speeds are always advertised in bits because it makes it sound better.

Its just different forms of measurement,

[Pib]

Corrrect, 10 Million Bits versus 10 Million Bytes (10 Million Bytes would be 80 Million Bits). Also notice that 3BB even used the lower case "b" (i.e., Mb) in their ad. Cheers.

So if I understand well, 1MB internet, 3MB 5, 10, 20MB etc. does not exist ? (for normal users)

1MB certainly exists but it is advertised as 8Mb.

Internet speeds are always advertised in bits because it makes it sound better.

Its just different forms of measurement,

Yeap, totally agree. A internet company could advertise their packages in bytes, but advertiseing in bits gives a 8 times higher number...a bigger number sounds better than a smaller number when advertising internet packages/speeds. Plus, it's pretty much the industry standard to specify internet speed in bits vs bytes. Even most of the internet speed test type programs give their result in bits (but a few do in bytes). You just have to look closely as to how things are being advertised, how speed results are reported, etc. That is, look for the upper case B or lower case b.

And don't be surprised if you find a few sites that incorrectly use the bytes ( and bits ( designation, which can really confuse a person. But with the basic understanding of 1 byte equals 8 bits and having a general idea of what speed you should be getting, you can normally figure out what those few sites should be reporting.

[lomatopo]

Standards bodies (ITU/ANSI), manufacturers and service providers all use Mega-bits per second (Mbit/sec). Further data communications lines and equipment are provisioned in Mbit/sec. Nothing really nefarious here. Some PC applications display data rates in Bytes/sec; others in bits/sec. A PC data file size is measured in Bytes. I think all the speed-test sites report their results in bits/sec. In order to answer the title question, "How To Measure My Real Internet Speed ?", one would transfer a file of known size in Bytes, measure the time to upload and/or download in seconds, then divide the former by the latter, and multiply by 8 and the result is in bits/sec. Most bandwidth monitoring applications show results in bits/sec while most file transfer programs, and bit-torrent, display results in Bytes/sec.

In the OP's case, at the instant the screen-shot was taken, the download speed was 1,296 bits/sec (1.296 Kb/s) and the upload speed was 2,648 bits/sec (2.648 Kb/s).

Edited October 4, 2010 by lomatopo

[Xircal]

Download a file from an FTP site. FTP is much faster than HTTP and gives a good indication of how fast your connection speed really is. Any of these will do: ftp://ftp1.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/