When you’re looking to improve your internet connection, there are a few things you can do to help. One is to make sure your router is up-to-date with the latest security patches. Another is to make sure your modem and router are compatible. And lastly, you can try using a speed test service like Speedtest.net or Cablevision’s broadband test service. If all of these measures don’t work, then it may be time to replace your internet connection altogether. But before doing that, it’s important to do some research on what might be causing your current internet connection problems and how to fix them. Here are four tips for conducting an effective performance test of your internet connection:

  1. Make sure you have an accurate broadband map of your area - This will help you identify any areas where your internet connection isn’t as strong as it should be. You can find this information online or in a local paper.
  2. Use a speedtest service - This will help you measure the speeds at which different websites are loading and will give you an idea of how well your current internet connection is performing overall. Speedtest also offers free trials so that you can try out different speeds before making a purchase.
  3. Use an app like PCMeter - This app will allow you to measure the quality of sound coming from various devices in your home such as speakers and headphones. You can also use this app to measure the strength of wifi signals in different parts of your house or city.
  4. Connect directly with other people - If all else fails, connect directly with other people through social media or chat rooms instead of using the web browser for online activities such as browsing the web or streaming video

It’s one thing to just hit up SpeedTest.net to get a rough idea of your internet connection speed, but what if you want to conduct more extensive testing over time to see if you’re really getting your money’s worth from your ISP?

Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.

The Question

SuperUser reader KronoS is in an interesting position: he has access to his old internet connection and his new internet connection for a period of time. During this period he wants to test them out:

What’s the best method for quantitatively measuring different aspects of the data connections?

What are some approaches that I can quantitatively test the speeds (both up and down) and quality of my internet connections (ping, time connection is down, etc,. )? Are there other consideration that should be taken when testing an internet connection? Are there any tools that can do this automatically and capture results?

Overall, I’m looking to compare the two connections over multiple periods of time such as peak hours (1600 – 2100 in my area), and with different loads such as streaming movies, uploading files, etc,.

The Answer

SuperUser contributor Dennis offers the following battery of tests to try out:

Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.

  1. Speed Tests

Test your maximum upload speed and download speed from several geographically distributed locations. Java, Flash and iPhone speed test (100% browser) available.

  1. Smokeping

Intensively monitor an IP address for 24 or more hours to review packet loss and/or excessive latency variability — from three different US locations 3. Line Quality – Ping Test

Test latency, jitter and packet loss to your IP address, including identification of any problems en-route to you.

The speed test requires Flash or Java; the other two require that your IP is pingable.

In the absence of a specialized tool for long-term speed tests, you could use a command-line network retriever (e.g. Wget or Wget for Windows) and download uncompressable test files with a shell/batch script.

The nearest test files to Arizona I could find are from speedtest.dal01.softlayer.com (Dallas, TX) and speedtest.sea01.softlayer.com (Seattle, WA).