Option for your site

tazman — Wed, 12 Jul 2000 05:06:31 +0000

If you have cgi, you can pass a document to the user with a time stamp in it(hidden field etc) and a fairly large picture or text body (something that will take a bit to load), have the document submit itself on load
( )

When you get the form back, you will have the original time stamp (passed in the form) and will know what the current time is. Then it is a matter of basic arithmetic to calculate speed of connection to user. ( (Size of document in bits + any pictures sent in bits) / time in secs). This will give a fairly close approximation of the speed of connection between your server and the users machine. This is the best speed measurement as it accounts for any impediments between you and this particular user. Just because the use has a 512kbps DSL connection doesnt mean they will get that bandwidth to your site. Play around with the size of the files sent etc.

Also, you can perform all this behind the scenes in a hidden frame or pop up a small child window to conduct the test...

Hope it helps.

Tazman

[Edited by tazman on 07-12-2000 at 01:11 AM]

Josh Simpson — Fri, 07 Jul 2000 10:31:57 +0000

Thanks blur
Excatily what i ws looking for
and that was what i was going to use it for

Blur — Fri, 07 Jul 2000 04:36:56 +0000

I remembered seeing a site months back that was pretty accurate in benchmarking connection speeds. I spent a few minutes digging, and was able to find the url once more, it's http://www.computingcentral.com/topics/bandwidth/speedtest.asp

The method used is described on the site. It is most certainly not perfect, but it does give a good indication of the connection speed you can expect between the client and the server. This would be useful for deciding what quality of video or audio stream to send the client, for example.

Hmm,

Jack Michaelson — Thu, 06 Jul 2000 15:49:20 +0000

Never heard of such a thing, but that doesn't mean it does not exist.

Vincent Puglia — Thu, 06 Jul 2000 14:44:22 +0000

Hi Josh,

Can't think of any client-side functions/commands, so I would say -- no.
You should be able to on the server-side, though. But, again, can't help you.

Vinny