Surf The Net up to 10 Times Faster, anywhere you have Dial-up, GUARANTEED!

"How to Test Your True Web Speed"

Want to know what your true web throughput speed is? Note: the results on this page are actual from our computer. Please write down the results you get because we will use them later.

To help you understand your throughput speed test, we first will briefly discuss the topic of throughput speed.

First understand that there is a difference in your connection speed and your throughput speed. Your connection speed is the baud rate you are experiencing through your telephone line. Generally speaking, if you have a 56K modem, your connection speed should be in the neighborhood of 44 to 50bps (bytes or characters per second).  If you have poor line conditions, or if your ISP uses older modem technology (or for a number of other reasons), your connection speed may only be 26.4 or some other lower number.  Regardless of your connection rate, High Speed Lite for Dial-up will increase your throughput, GUARANTEED!

You can view your current connection speed by right clicking on the TV Icon in the bottom right hand corner of your computer screen in what is known as the "System Tray," which looks something like this:

When you right click on the Icon, a small screen will pop up that looks like this:

Left Click on "Status" to see your connection speed. When you do you will get a screen that displays your connection speed in bytes per second. Click OK to close the screen.

Again, your connection speed won't necessarily be 50,666, but regardless what the reported speed is, you should remember that throughput speeds are quite different than your connection speed.  Throughput speed as the rate of which a page web page loads onto your browser screen.  This may be lower that your connections speed due to the latency involved in a dial-up connection, due to TCP/IP overhead, due to delays in DNS lookup, or due to negotiation and teardown times for individual TCP/IP sessions. Typical, actual throughput speeds for a dial-up access connection using a 56K modem varies on average from 25-35kbps (kilobytes per second).

Here's where you can test your own THROUGHPUT speed right now.

Some independent throughput tests you can try right now are available at:
 

If you want to test your own speed, click on this link: http://homepage.tinet.ie/~leslie/testpage.htm . Your browser will open a new window. This is the independent site we will use for the test.

When you get to the new page, you will see a selection of two tests. For the purpose of the throughput test, you may click on either one but the larger 470 KBytes test will give a better overall average of your throughput speed. Once you pick your selection, use the same selection each time for each session of testing that you do so you can get fairly consistent results.

For the purpose of this test tutorial, click on the Large Graphic (470KBytes) test.  NOTE:  This test will likely take a couple minutes if you are using a regular dialup modem.  When we tested, our average time was over 150 seconds on dialup, so be patient.

As the test image builds you will begin to see this picture emerge.

Above you can see what the large (470KBytes) test graphic looks like when it is finished. This page will attempt to measure how long it takes to load a GIF graphic file. Please note that in order to view the full image at lower resolutions, the image is shown one third actual size, and therefore appears to be fully loaded when one third of the download has completed.  Be patient as the interlaced image loads, which will likely take 2 to 3 minutes on regular dialup.

The instant the image has finished downloading the Test Result page will open with your throughput test results. The Test Result page will present your throughput in a horizontal bar graph format with some comparison results. The throughput speed is measured in cps (Characters Per Second) and can be roughly converted into Kilo Bytes per second by multiplying the test results by .008. Above test example: 3130cps x .008 = 25K

You can do this test several times to make sure you get an accurate measurement. (Image does not load into your computer's cache so you will not get skewed results).

Want to see how High Speed Lite™ will speed downloading web pages?