Part 4 of Quick tips on how to improve your PC's performance

Posted By: D-A-L | Date Added: 30-08-2007 05:31 PM | Views: 2720

Quick tips on how to improve your PC's performance by Nathan Forrest Hi! Welcome to the fourth brief article in this multi-part series that will show you how to clean up your PC and improve its performance. We'll be giving you inside tips on all of the checks and improvements that we carry out when we visit our UK customers for a "health check" on a desktop or laptop PC. Each week, we'll be showing you how to carry out another part of the full "health check" yourself and it won't cost you anything! Note that this article refers to PCs that run Windows, Linux, etc. but should also be relevant for Apple Mac users. Previous related articles: Part 1: Performance status (http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/143.html) Part 2: Clearing out temporary files (http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/144.html) Part 3: Defragmenting your hard disk (http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/145.html) Part 4: Checking your Internet speed Have you ever wondered why broadband Internet Service Providers (ISPs) no longer make claims of being able to provide you with broadband at 2 megabits per second (Mbps or "meg"), 8Mbps or 24Mbps? Instead, they now advertise services such as "Up to 2 meg broadband" or "Lightning fast broadband up to 8Mbps". They now have to say "up to" when they quote a speed. There is a good reason for this but it isn't that broadband services are slowing down and you might no longer be able to get the full claimed speed. In fact, practically none of us have ever been able to get the full speeds quoted by our ISPs! The reason for this is that the broadband signal gets degraded (i.e. you get a slower connection) the further that you are from the local telephone exchange. Unless you can take a laptop and a short length of cable into your local telephone exchange and convince them to wire you in direct, it's unlikely that you'll get the full speed that the exchange is capable of! So, with this in mind, you might now be wondering whether you are actually getting what you are paying for (particularly if you know that you are connected to a telephone exchange that is some distance away - the limit for broadband is typically around 7km). It may be that you made the switch from 56k dial-up to 0.5Mbps or 1Mbps broadband a long time ago and you couldn't believe how fast it was. But then, after a while, you got used to it and decided to upgrade to a 2Mbps or 8Mbps service and it didn't seem much quicker. It may be that you are now paying considerably more but aren't really getting any benefit from it because you are too far from the exchange. It is unlikely that the ISP will test the potential speed and then tell you not to upgrade. And, unfortunately, they couldn't even do much about it even if they wanted to. The signal strength coming down your telephone line (which is shared by your broadband modem or router) is in the hands of the telephony company. Even if you have a combined phone and broadband package, the chances are that your ISP is just "piggy-backing" off of a bigger telco's infrastructure and re-selling their phone package with a small profit margin. The good news is that there are some options available to improve our Internet speed (including switching to cable). However, let's first find out what our connection rate is at the moment. To do this, we will use a fantastic web site (not affiliated with Future Systems, D-A-L.com or D24 Media Ltd) that will carry out a timed download test and upload test. There is no charge for the service. In previous articles, we have given detailed instructions on carrying out tasks that novice users might struggle to do without a lot of guidance. However, this one couldn't really be any easier. Open your web browser such as Internet Explorer, go to http://www.speedtest.net and then pick the location that is closest to you on the map (see figure 1). Figure 1. The web site will then perform 3 tests: 1. Ping test - this shows latency, which, in this example, is how long it takes for your desktop or laptop PC (or server) to send a very short "hello" message to another server on the Internet and then for that server to respond with a short "hello" back. This happens so quickly that it is measured in milliseconds (60ms or 0.06 seconds is typical). It has to be extremely quick, otherwise there would be a lag after every single command that you sent from your PC over the Internet - when you click a button on a web page or start typing some text into a web site form, for example, you don't want to have to wait for the web site's server to even realise that you've done something. 2. Download test - this is the main test and it shows you how quickly your PC can pull data in from a web server on the Internet. Even the most basic web page containing only text has to be downloaded from the Internet onto your PC before you can view it all. As the number of images and complex controls on the web page increases, the amount of time that it takes to download it and show it fully on your screen also increases. Therefore, having a good download speed is the key subject of this article. 3. Upload test - this test shows how quickly your PC can send data OUT to a web server on the Internet. Don't worry: the test only uses test data and no personally identifiable information is transmitted apart from your IP address. Most Internet users don't realise that there are two speed measurements involved in determining how quick your connection is. However, whilst most of us don't even think about how quick our upload speed is, it does affect our use of the Internet, particularly where transferring files is involved. Sending out emails with attachments, uploading photos to Facebook, Bebo or MySpace and various other Internet-related tasks could all be slowed down significantly by a poor upload speed. Figure 2. Figure 2 shows the test that I have just carried out on my PC whilst sat in the office writing this article. My PC achieved a 1237Kbps (1.2Mbps) download speed during the test and I'm paying for an "up to 8 meg" service. Disappointing huh?! The upload speed isn't actually too bad here. It's always lower than the download speed if you are using regular Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) broadband, which most of us are. In the UK, at least, it's normally capped at 448Kbps for residential users and sometimes 768Kbps for business broadband services. After the test, the web site shows your results and charts comparing them with the average results for your ISP and for other Internet users in your country and in your continent. At the time of writing this article, over 178 million tests had been carried out on the site! North America averaged the fastest connection with Europe in second position. It is also worth bearing in mind that your Internet connection will fluctuate at different times of the day and at other times when the Internet may be busier than usual. For instance, if there is widespread flooding across the country, a lot of people will be checking the weather forecast throughout the afternoon to see if they can get home from work. If a major computer virus outbreak has just been announced on the news, you might find that there is a lot of Internet traffic for the rest of the day whilst everyone rushes on to update their anti-virus software! It is, therefore, worth taking several tests at different times and on different days. My PC had a 1.2Mbps download speed in the test shown in figure 2 but it is usually more like 1.8Mbps. The www.speedtest.net web site will store your results and give you an average for your PC if it has kept the same IP address. I hope that you found this fourth part of our series on PC performance useful. If it has shocked you and you've now realised that your Internet connection is much slower than it could be, check out next week's article for suggestions on how to speed it up! Nathan Forrest - Future Systems (Sussex) http://www.futuresystems-sussex.co.uk This article may not be copied or distributed in part or in full from this site and is copyright D24 Media Limited.

Comments

Posted By: Wes Nile  18-10-2007 03:00 PM

Speedtest.net shows nothing in relation to Canada.Useless site if Canadian !!!!

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