Enter Auto Speed Tester, a freeware for Windows that can run Internet speed tests regularly on the system.

The core interface of the software program has a few issues, like buttons that do not show up at first or button text that is not displaying correctly on the button. Those are minor issues but things the developer should fix to turn the application into a professionally looking software.

New users need to click on the Configs button in the main interface to configure the application before first usage. The configuration can also be opened via Menu > Configuration.

The three important configuration pages are download, upload and Ping/IP. The download test files are configured in the download tab. A pulldown menu next to the Main Test File url opens a list of suitable speed test files, ranging from 1 Megabyte to 1 Gigabyte in size. You should pay attention to the country extension to pick a location next to your physical location. This is unfortunately the only indicator of a test file’s location in the world.

Nothing needs to be configured under the upload tab, unless you want to switch from uploading to the default ftp server to another ftp server. You need to enter the ftp server IP or hostname, user name and password in that case.

The Ping and IP tab runs ping, packetloss, jitter and IP lookup tests. The test server for the commands can be modified here, and specific tests disabled if you do not want to run them.

Auto Speed Tester runs the selected tests once every 60 minutes. You can change the interval in the main program window.

All previous Internet speed tests are displayed here as well. You see the date and time, download and upload speed in KB/s, the ping and if you scroll vertically the packetloss, jitter and the public IP assigned to your computer or device.

A chart on the right displays the same values, averages at the bottom right show the all time best performance, and the best performance of the month, week and day.

You can send the program to the system tray where it will run the tests in the background. This reduces the program’s memory footprint considerably. You may notice speed drops due to those tests when you work with the computer. But since it usually does not take longer than 30 seconds to complete the tests, it should not interfere with work to much.

The core benefits of the program are that it runs Internet speed tests over time, and that all tests can be customized.

Interested users can download the latest version of JackDinn’s Auto Speed Tester from the developer website. The program is compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit client and server editions of Windows from Windows XP to the very latest Windows 7.

Most speed tests on the Internet let you connect to one of their servers to perform the test. That’s sometimes not beneficial especially if the servers are not located in your country.

Tracert and ping are available on the local system but they do not reveal the speed of the connection.

SpeedTest is a free client and server software for Windows that can be used to test the connection speed of a local network or the Internet.

Users can install the client version to test the connection speed to IPs or Internet domains, or the Server version to allow clients to connect to that server to test the connection speed.

To test the speed users enter either an IP address or domain name in the Server form in the application interface. A click on connect or the enter key will connect to the location and record information about the connection. This includes the time, duration, bytes received and speed in KB/s.

The speed tester creates a visual representation of the connection speeds in a chart automatically.

Results can be printed or copied from the connection log. SpeedTest is available for download at the developer website. It is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Net Traffic, a free portable application for Windows is a realtime Internet speed monitor that display the download and upload speed of a selected network adapter. Internet speed is not the best term, as it is quite possible to monitor traffic in a local network as well.

Windows users need to select the right network adapter first if more than one is installed on the computer. The program immediately begins to display the upload and download traffic of the adapter in two bars. The bars scale from 0 Kb/s to 100 Mb/s, sufficient for most Internet connections.

A click on options displays the program options, which can be used to change some parameters of the program. It is for instance possible to display the maximum upload and download speed which is great for speed tests. Another handy option is to change the refresh time and to enable a tray message that displays it the download or upload speed drops or goes beyond a set limit. The options can be hidden again so that only the bars are displayed on top. The on top option is enabled by default. Users who do not want this can uncheck the Top box in the application interface to disable that feature.

The system tray icon displays the download and upload speed as well when the mouse hovers over the icon.

Net Traffic is an interesting application, considering that it has a size of less than 100 Kilobyte after unpacking. The program requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 to be installed on the system.

The third possibility are software programs that are executed on the computer system. One of these is Down Tester by the popular software developer Nirsoft. Down Tester comes with all the usual traits that all Nirsoft applications come with. It is portable, offers command line options and highly customizable for the purpose at hand. Its main purpose is to record the download speeds of various files that get added by the user. The reason why the software does not come with a default set of files is server overload.

This means that the user has to add files manually in the software program before the Internet speed test can be started. Down Tester will then download one file after the other until all files have been downloaded. It displays the speed in bytes and bits at the end plus other values like the start time, download duration, size and url of the file.

It is possible to create html reports of the results of the Internet speed test. The software offers some advanced options like setting ftp mode to passive or active, stopping downloads after 5000 Kilobytes automatically or the amount of retries if a connection fails. Down Tester fails to test the upload speed of a connection which might be worth an upgrade and should not be to hard to implement; Maybe by adding a list of upload file hosts to the program.

Finch tries to achieve a similar goal. The web service acts pretty much like a web proxy with the difference that bandwidth reduction and not anonymity is the top priority. Finch will not load CSS files, no images and no scripts. Stripping a website of most of its contents reduces its size tremendously. The size of the New York Times homepage is reduced by 94% when using Finch.

This method has some serious disadvantages though. Many websites become unusable. Finch does not support scripts which are required by some to function properly. Cookies are not supported as well which meaning logins won’t function properly as well.

Finch works best on static websites or those that function without scripts and cookies. Running the website through Finch will reduce the bandwidth that is transferred which means a speed gain and reduction of the monthly transfer rate. It’s on the other hand nothing for users who spend most of their time on social sites.

One major problem is the reliability of those speed tests on the Internet. Some show lower speeds even if the Internet connection is able to handle faster speeds. This can be due to server capacities at the speed test host, the location of the servers in the world or general routing problems that affect the measured speed.

Speed.io is the first broadband speed test on the Internet that measured the speed of an Internet connection correctly. Every other speed test was usually missing a few thousand Kbits. The service measures the download and upload speed, the maximum number of connections and the response time of the Internet connection.

The download speed test result was 14806 Kbit and the result of the upload speed test was 990 Kbit which comes close to the maximum capacities of the 16 Mbit / 1 Mbit advertised speed of the Internet provider.

The developers of Speed.io claim to utilize 50.000 servers world wide for their speed tests which seems an awful lot but would be an incredible infrastructure if this was the case. Still, it does not really matter if they have 1 or 50K servers as long as the speed tests are accurate.

The result was that the cheapest megabit per second connection was available in Japan with $0.22 for every megabit while it cost $3.18 in the United States and $81.13 in Turkey. Japan and the Scandinavian countries have in large regions access to 100 Mbit fibre networks while the rest of the world relies mainly on cable and dsl for broadband access.

My broadband connection has a speed of 16 Mbit / 1 Mbit and I pay roughly $68 for it including phone and phone flatrate. I would of course prefer to subscribe to a 100 Mbit line but those are unfortunately not available right now. So, how much do you pay for your internet connection and how fast – or slow – is it ?