It is now hard for some people to imagine what life was like before the advent of the internet. Today, we use it socially, professionally, and educationally. In line with this, it is also important to perform a free high speed internet test. With so many elements of your life depending on the quality of your internet connection, you need to know how good it is.

How to Perform a Free High Speed Internet Test:

There are two key elements in conducting the test:

1. The rate of downloads
2. The rate of uploads

Although the upload speed matters, the download speed matters a whole lot more. This is because most of the data comes in to our computer, instead of the other way around.

There are many ways to test your internet speed, one of which is done manually. This means that you work out how long it takes for your computer to get a file of a certain size. However, this is a very old fashioned and complicated way.

Today, we usually simply go online and use an internet speed test found there. This means that they will send you a file, and you send that file back. The website’s algorithm then works out how long both the upload and the download took, which gives you your speed. Best of all, this gives you a real time reading. This matters because the internet speed depends on various factors: your geographical location, the time of day, and how many people are on your connection at the same time.

Improving Your Speed:

Once you have completed your high speed internet test, you may find that it isn’t as fast as you would like it to be. To speed it up, you can:

1. Install a purpose-built optimization software
2. Tweak your TCP optimizer on your broadband connector
3. Change your internet provider.

The third option is usually the preferred option, and the best one out of the lot. Optimization software can work, but only to a certain degree. Furthermore, it is also common for this type of software to contain a virus. Tweaking your TCP optimizer will also work, but only if you know what you’re doing. And if you are an internet/broadband/WiFi technician, you probably already have the highest speed internet.

So that leaves you with changing your internet service provider. All providers nowadays advertise with the notion that they have a very high speed. They will entice you with their megabytes per second and those speeds do look very attractive indeed. However, it is important to be aware that the speed they advertise is the fastest they are able to achieve, which most likely is not the one that you will consistently get. Hence, you do have to make sure that you don’t fall for the flashy numbers and letters, but that you do a little bit of research first. Find out what others have said about the speed of a particular provider and read independent reviews. At the end of the day, when you sign up to a new service provider, you will be contracted to them for quite some time as well.