[NCLUG] testing internet connection

[Sean Reifschneider]

On Sun, Jan 14, 2001 at 12:38:23AM -0700, Mark C. Smith wrote:
>Does anyone know of a good way that I can test my line speed?

Hmm, we were just talking about this last night at the Pythoneers meeting.
There are a lot of things that contribute to a "slow" connection.  How
is it slow?  Download speeds?  Those are often caused by congestion
(just because you have a spare mbps on your line doesn't mean that the
remote end and every hop along the way also does).  It takes a long
time for web pages to start coming up?  That can be caused by latency,
which is very different from bandwidth.

There's a program called "mtr" which works very well for tracking down
latencies and some congestion in the route between you and a remote site.
The closer that slow-down is to the remote site, the less likely changing
providers is going to help.

Sean
-- 
 Think.
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python