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Speed tests abound on the Internet. Some are more complicated than others and their accuracy can be questionable. I like the speed test at dslreports.com. You don't even have to know what kind of service you have. Just pick a city you want to test against.
Picking a nearby city is fair for testing the claims ISPs make. It errs on the side of the fastest conditions under your ISP's control. Picking one far away subjects the speed to more distance and more interference from other carriers, but can really prove the muscle of your ISP.
Before you start the test, shut down every application you have running and close any tabs. That goes for every computer on your home network. If you have anything else using your bandwidth, then the test application will register a lower amount than you actually received.
Once you're ready, click on your chosen city. The app will use dummy data to measure the latency, upload, and download data transfer rates. You'll see a mark on a graph for your results, compared with the results of others who used the test. This can be filtered by ZIP code and ISP. If you filter by ISP, you can see what speeds others have reported, and use that as a check against a company's claimed speeds.
Now remember, you'll never get exactly the rate advertised, because bandwidth is usually shared. In cable systems, it's shared with your neighbors, so the speed may fluctuate wildly depending on how many people are using it when you test. Even with Fios and DSL connections, overall network traffic can impact your speeds.
So, it's best to do a few tests at different times, and even from a few different services. DSL Reports offers a directory to worldwide speed tests, including some offered by CNET.
John Cioffi joins the show to explain the difference between fiber optic cable and copper cable. Find out what you should know and why you should care.
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It's our international show with an Australian phone, U.K. laptops for life and bandwidth troubles solved for a South African.
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Things We Crave
Non-G1 Android phone to hit Australia in January
First Look
Best of the Web
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Back up your DVDs to iTunes and your iPod
Your video calls
Charlie in South Africa sent a video about bandwidth metering. There are a lot of filtering programs out there meant for protecting children, but that can be used to password protect Internet access. For more advanced Internet control, try Traffic Shaper XP. I found it referenced in this article here. You could also try third-party firmware for the router like dd-wrt or Tomato.
Alex needed some help getting a printer connected to Vista to play nice with a Mac. Brian Tong recommended Bonjour for Windows, which allows a Windows machine to network easily with the Macs Bonjour networking protocol.
Roberto just wanted to say thank you for winning an iPod Touch on the Holiday Help Desk last Friday. Your very welcome Roberto!
Your calls
Steve called back with woes regarding his Actiontec router for Verizon Fios which constantly loses connection. Molly noted this is a common complaint of Fios users and suggested switching channels to see if you can avoid interference, and also suggested that Steven turn off his 2.4 GHz phone which may interfere with the Wi-Fi router. There's also a thread on DSLReports.com about other users trying to replace the Actiontec router.
You can use an old TV with component cables and 5.1 or optical audio just fine. The only video issue will be the lack of 1080p for high-definition content. But otherwise it will work well.
Want a good TV with 120Hz refresh rate? Take a look through our recommended top LCD TVs.
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Whether it's a regular text note, or a recorded video question, you can send it to cnetlive@cnet.com. Keep your videos to 15 seconds or less, post them to a Web site like Youtube, and then e-mail us the link.
Dara O'Rourke from Good Guide chats with Brian Cooley about how to determine what products are good and good for you.
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Things we Crave
SmartParts Wi-Fi picture frame
First Look
Free Download of the week
Insider Secret
Best of the Web
Your calls
YouTube Downloader will download and convert YouTube videos for you. Particularly for the Zune, is an IE plugin called Zunemytube.
Maximize DVD ripping by making a bit-for-bit copy of the DVD.
It's an all-call show as we gave away a free BlackBerry Curve. On eof the perks of watching the live version of the show every Thursday at 4 PM Eastern. However there's still lots of good info for the podcast and on-demand viewers. Here are the notes.
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Things we Crave
First Look
Free Download of the week
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Best of the Web
Your calls
A few more ways to sync your iTunes across several computers, this week using an external hard drive. This forum shows a way to trick iTunes into thinking the main library is permanently on the external drive by pointing to the itunes.itl file.
With the iPhone you can Jailbreak and get voicemails off the phone and on to your computer. This Lifehacker article shows you how. For a Nokia or another phone, your best bet is to play the voicemail over the speaker into the computer as a recording.
A couple easy ways to speed up a Mac are to add more RAM or run Onyx, the optimizer. You can find a few more ways in this article.
Want ringtones on your iPhone but can't get them through the iTunes store? Check out Audiko.net as described here.
The Nokia N810 is probably the best Internet tablet we've found. Our caller was from the UK, so here's the CNET UK review.
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