Chris Mitchell from Muninetworks.org joins us to discuss Net Neutrality and who should own the pipes.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

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.

Go to Tools and select Manage Add-ons.

Then select Search providers.

You'll see Microsoft Live Search and whichever options you chose during install. If that was Live Search, that's all you'll see.

Now click Find more search providers.

You'll get a list of various options. Press "Add to Internet Explorer" to add the providers you want. Each time you'll get the option to make it a default search provider, and include terms in the suggested search terms. If you don't see your favorite. Scroll to the bottom and click "Create your own search provider."

Now open a new tab, and enter the URL of the search engine you want to include. Search for the word TEST in all capital letters. Copy the URL of the search results page by highlighting it and pressing the "Windows" and "C" keys at the same time.

Now click back to the tab that says "crate your own search provider." Use the "Windows" and "V" keys to paste the URL you copied earlier into the box marked URL. Then give the search engine a name. And press Install Search Provider. If you want to make this your default search provider, check that box. Then press Add one more time.

Now when you type a keyword in the search box, icons for all the search engines you selected will show up. Just click on one with your mouse to search the keywords you typed in that engine.

We investigate whether Tuesday's inauguration inspired the biggest traffic day ever on the Internet, and dive into the Windows 7 beta.

Watch the show on CNET TV.

Things we crave

We speak with Bill Woodcock from Packet Clearing House about whether Tuesday broke Internet traffic records. First Look

Windows 7 Beta

Download of the week

Magic Camera 4

Quick Tip

How to get Windows 7 beta

Your calls

If you're into QBasic and programming games, take a look at QBasic Station

Brian Tong compares the Canon HF S10 and the HF 20.

You can boot from a USB thumbdrive in OS X, even boot Linux if you want. Take a look at this wiki. E-mail us!
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.

This should, in no way, be considered an official review--see CNET and CNET News for the proper shebang. I've just been using Chrome for a few hours and thought I'd dash off some quick thoughts.

First: It is fast as you-know-what. It feels super-responsive, so much so that I first thought it must be a trick. The tabs almost seem to click themselves; the autocomplete is so speedy that I thought it was reading my mind. After download and launch, it pulled in not only my bookmarks but, apparently, also my Awesome Bar history. Once I loaded it up and typed "T," Twitter.com was almost already loaded in the tab. It was slightly terrifying, actually. One note: Chrome did not import my Firefox Live Bookmarks--the RSS feeds that appear in a drop-down from the menu bar, and it sadly doesn't have this as a feature at all.

The "tabs-on-top" interface is actually a tiny bit off-putting at first. I'm so used to tabs being below the URL bar that I initially felt confused about which ones I had opened. Also, there are no traditional menus for...well, anything. There's almost no text whatsoever at the top of the browser window. No File, Edit, View, Tools, etc. You've got a wrench for the very minimal selection of customization settings and a button to the left of that where you access the menu items you normally find in "File," "Edit," and "Tools," along with a Developer option where you'll find Chrome's Windows-style Task manager (and a JavaScript debugger and console, which I think I might really need...see below).

There's not even a separate search bar; you conduct everything from the URL bar. I did discover that the Ctrl-K keyboard shortcut that normally puts your cursor in the search bar in Firefox adds a little question mark to the Chrome URL bar, so the browser knows for sure that you're conducting a search. But it's not really necessary. If you type anything but a URL into the URL bar, Chrome does a search. I like it, but it takes a little getting used to.