Although internet connection is fast enough (8 Mbps, wireless speedtest), I'm having trouble streaming radio from a certain site. Here's the peculiar thing: the stream seems to run smoothly on other ISPs, so I'm suspecting that this might be a peering issue.
How can I test my connection speed with a certain site or server?
54 Answers
Since you can download from that certain site, albeit at a reduced speed, your ISP may be engaging in traffic shaping rather than in outright banning of certain sites/ports/protocols. This is a more difficult situation to diagnose, but not an impossible one.
The instrument to do this is Glasnost, a Java based series of tests taking aim exactly at ISPs´ traffic shaping of BitTorrent, EMule, Gnutella, Youtube, and so on. Each test is longish (several minutes), and basically compares the speed of different services between their servers and you: if they detect large discrepancies between service data transfer rates, then they have made it at least likely that your ISP is engaging in traffic shaping.
The test comes from a Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, which, judging from this Web page, is a fully legitimate Institute of the highly prestigious German Max Planck Society. So, while activating Java is always a security risk, you are not risking much from these guys. But pls do remember to de-activate Java as soon as you are done, for your own safety, and especially if you are on Windows.
4Here is a free open-source tool that periodically checks your Internet connection. What the tool does is to trigger a file download every X minutes, logs the speed and displays it graphically:
Important: You can enter a custom test URL into the Loggger app, in this case it would be the URL of the problematic website/download.
Note: Speed Test Loggger is stated as a free and open-source side project of the a9t9 Web Automation Team and it runs on Windows 7, 8, 10...
5Two simple tools will give basic information about your connection to a certain website :
ping
The command ping website measures round-trip time
from your computer to the specified website.
tracert
The command tracert website breaks traversal time into steps
from your computer to the specified website,
so you can see at which stage the slow-down occurs.
For more information, or if you suspect that your ISP varies the connection speed in function of what you are doing at the moment, you could use a broadband measuring tool to measure the evolution of your speed over time.
NetWorx
One free tool for example is NetWorx, which generates bandwidth monitoring and data usage reports. This tool is only free during 2016, so better download it before 2017 arrives.
2Yes, go here. It is a wonderful speed test site for internet. You just select which server you want to test your speed with (they have servers you select from) and it tests upload speed, download speed, ping, distance from server being tested with, and more. I'm guessing this could help little bit since with this, you could test a server in the other servers general area.
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