We have had cable internect for years and I have the vague feeling that my connection at home has gotten slower over the last couple. This could also be because my computer is getting old and browsers are getting fatter or it could be that my bandwidth is lower than it used to be for some reason. So, how do I know if I’m getting the service I expect from the cable company?
What I really need a way of telling the bandwidth available to me at any given moment so I can tell if my ISP is delivering what I am paying for. Is it as simple as checking the connection (usually says something like 100mps, I’m not at my home computer now?)
The 100Mbps you see on your connection properties is the speed of the Ethernet connection between your computer and the cable modem. It doesn’t have any bearing on the speed of your Internet connection.
As the poster above said, speedtest.net is a good site to test your connection speed. Note that connection speeds are usually discussed in terms of Megabits/second, while speeds you see when downloading files, for instances, are usually expressed in terms of Megabytes/second. There are 8 bits to a byte, so a throughput of say, 2MBps (uppercase B = byte) is equivalent to 16Mbps (lowercase b = bit).