One of my co-workers just pointed out a new speed test site to me, and it is very cool. Therefore, I must share. You’re welcome.
You have an icon of a little guy which represents your computer, there are little triangular icons representing servers you can test with… click on a server, your little guy pees on it for a minute, and it tells you your upload and download speeds! Too cool! 
Very cool! Thanks.
That’s telling me that the test server in London is a piece of shit. I got a faster upload to Sydney and New York than I got on download from the one down the road from me.
I got 13.4 mb/s download for the New York server. That sounds really high. Upload was only about 500 kb/s. The other servers weren’t that fast. Has my cable company given me a gift recently?
I think it doesn’t apply different data to deal with caching on subsequent downloads. Otherwise there is a g3 line direct from Montreal to my house.
Huh, dunno… but keep in mind that the most accurate measure of your speed is going to be the closest server (which will be the recommended one). Anything other than the closest server will be running through additional hops, adding to the lag.
So if you live next door to the SDMB server…? 
You’re assuming that the servers aren’t struggling, nor is their connection. Yesterday, at a similar time to jjimm’s post, I also got only 500k out of the London server and better results from further afield. Now, in the morning, the London one turns out 4.5Gb, whereas Sydney is at 300k (it’s mid-afternoon there, isn’t it?)
Using the Seattle server (100 mi. away) I got 2978 kb/s download, 311 kb/s upload, 415 ms latency.
Here to Orlando (about 100 miles): 6783kbps down, 485 up.
Here to Atlanta (about 400 miles): 6887, 484.
Here to Seattle (about 2500 miles): 5340, 484.
Here to Karachi, Pakistan (halfway): 596, 171.
This is a pretty neat little gadget. Also, I’m shocked by the lack of lag. A 223ms ping all the way to New Zealand. Tell that to someone 20 years ago and you’d’a gotten laughed out of the room.