Testing the speed of your Internet connection can be very important. Your Internet provider may be promising a specific broadband speed and you may want to know if they are living up to their end of the deal. Internet speed tests are easy to find as the Internet becomes more and more prevalent.

Testing at Home

A number of places online will test your Internet connection strength and speed. These tools test your Internet connection by downloading a small file to your computer and then uploading it. Testing your download speed is important if you often download files like movies or music or use online office programs or photo-editing software. Measuring your upload speed is important if you regularly upload files to off-site servers and services. You will want fast upload speeds to send files to services such as YouTube and Flickr. Standouts in the area of Internet connection speed testing are speakeasy.net and speedtest.net. Both test sites will help you gauge and understand your Internet connection speed.

Test Speed On the Go

Mobility is a major focus in this day and age. If you are on the go with your Wi-Fi enabled device such as iPhone or iPod Touch you can easily test the Internet connection speed wherever you happen to be. Do a search in Apple's App store for "Speed Test" and you will find a variety of free or very reasonably priced applications. As of November 2009, the most expensive broadband speed test app is listed at $1.99. It does not offer any practical benefits over the free app, though. It is simply a different brand name. The most popular app in the store for testing Internet connection speed is the speedtest.net app. It is a free download and will provide you with a simple to read and fast test. Upon starting the app you will be asked to give your permission for the app to use your current location. It is important to allow this, as the broadband speed test is based on the distance between you and the test-app servers.

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Internet Connection Speed Information