TechnoPhillia!!

It is sometimes advisable to test the Internet speed either to test if the advertised speeds that the IPS lured you in with are reachable or to download speeds from various parts of the world. Internet Service Provider usually offer a test file on their servers that their customers can use to test the download speed. This however can be highly different from the download speed to other parts of the country or overseas. Another possibility to test the Internet speed is by using websites that offer speed tests.

The third possibility are software programs that are executed on the computer system. One of these is Down Tester by the popular software developer Nirsoft. Down Tester comes with all the usual traits that all Nirsoft applications come with. It is portable, offers command line options and highly customizable for the purpose at hand. Its main purpose is to record the download speeds of various files that get added by the user. The reason why the software does not come with a default set of files is server overload.

This means that the user has to add files manually in the software program before the Internet speed test can be started. Down Tester will then download one file after the other until all files have been downloaded. It displays the speed in bytes and bits at the end plus other values like the start time, download duration, size and url of the file.

It is possible to create html reports of the results of the Internet speed test. The software offers some advanced options like setting ftp mode to passive or active, stopping downloads after 5000 Kilobytes automatically or the amount of retries if a connection fails. Down Tester fails to test the upload speed of a connection which might be worth an upgrade and should not be to hard to implement; Maybe by adding a list of upload file hosts to the program.