Although our preferred method for determining your connect speed on the Internet is with the INETBENCH utility (for more info, click here), there are a variety of online speed tests that you can use. Most of these are geared towards measuring file download speeds that you might see when downloading files like MP3's or software applications -- and thus aren't really relevant to the speeds you get when you are just "surfing" the Internet.  And because there are so many variables involved, you'll likely see some wide variations in the speeds reported. All of which is why we prefer tests such as INETBENCH, of course! But these other tests do serve some purpose, so here are some of the better ones:

• DSL Reports -- these tests require JAVA plug-in and JAVASCRIPT enabled, plus if you are using any ad blocking software you will need to disable it -- site also has some excellent speed tweaking tools


• PC-WELT-DSL Speedtest -- nice clean and simple test


• Speedtest.net -- the "official" speed test for AT&T tech support


• Internet Frog -- good speed test, plus a variety of other network tools are available


• Broadband Speed Checker -- good simple-to-use test from the UK


• numion.com WebSpeed -- this is more similar to what we do with INETBENCH since they actually measure download speeds to various web sites