(March 21, 2012 at 5:56 pm)padraic Wrote: Can anyone recommend a reliable test for download/upload speeds?
My new ISP claims download speeds of 12 to 100 Mbps.
I've done two tests:
The first one gave a download speed of 9 Mbps(which is a huge improvement)
The second gave a speed of 32 Mbps.
If by "reliable" you mean "consistent", you aren't likely to find one. You're dealing with so many shared pipes at unknown usage levels that you're not likely to see consistent test results.
Depends also on what you're testing - your ISP claims of 12-100 Mbps probably means "up to 12-100 Mbps, until you leave our network", which doesn't really tell you much about sites you're interested in.
The best "test" I've used is a bittorrent client. Start a download of several well-seeded torrents with your client configured to handle as many connections as your equipment can handle without choking. You'll probably be able to saturate your pipe (or whatever else is the bottleneck on your end), and see what your aggregate download/upload speed is at any point in time. Unfortunately, this isn't the kind of test you can just run, it takes a bit of experimentation to get the config right.
It's also entirely possible that your speed is going to be limited by your equipment as well, when you start talking about the mid-upper end of what they claim to provide. If you're running wireless-G, you'll never break 54Mbps (and probably won't even get nearly that good). Even if you're running wired ethernet, it's very possible you won't get anywhere near the rated speed of the wire, or your pipe (crappy network hardware, crappy drivers, crappy network stack).
