Hi i am trying to up my cable modem access by using various patches teaks, progs. How can i see the difference in speed. I remember there was a site which measures the bandwidth but can't remember.

If you do NOT own the cable modem, DON'T mess with it! They are not cheap. Charles

http://www.dslreports.com/stest?loc=2

I've had cable for 2 weeks. At first, it was slower than a 56k modem. That caused me to get obsessed over speed. every single day, I did bandwidth tests on every website i could find. I would constantly tweak my computer's setting, reboot, and re-test my speed. I would literally reboot maybe 25 times a day, at least. Here is what I've found out: 1. bandwidth tests are only snapshots of the internet. It shows the internet congestion at the time you took your test. One minute it'll be high, the next minute, it's slow. 2. Don't just run patches/registry files. They are generic and usually don't modify your system correctly. To correctly tune your computer, you need to edit the settings yourself, test it, and then tune some more. There's no "magic program" to make your computer instantly fast. 3. Your modem can handle alot faster speeds...but your isp caps/limits your speed. 4. The number of users on your node affects your speed. Your neighbors share the isp bandwidth with you. 5. Uploading does affect downloading. If you saturate your upload line (easy to do with my isp, since we have a 128k cap), the download lines for everyone suffers. www.dslreports.com www.pcpitstop.com www.toast.net/performance www.testmyspeed.com just do a google search for bandwidth tests...you will literally find hundreds to truly test your internet speed, you need to download a huge file (at least 5 MB), and time how long the download takes. you should do it from several different sites. Do not be concerned with bandwidth results! They deceived me for quite a while. Would you rather have high test results, or better performance? I found that my computer's speed is much faster when my test results are lower, and vice versa. Download "DU Meter"...it will tell you how quick your connection is.

Hey thanks alot, a real helpful post. Usually i get silly replies. Anyway i found some tests and they were quite slow and i realised how slow my modem was going. I have DU meter also and my websites d/l at 15 kilobytes/s. And file/mp3 downloading have gone really slow and i dnt knw why - I use flashget for files and max i get is 15 kilobytes/s (befor upto 90 k/s) and in kazaa or somthing max i have seen is 10kilobytes/s (before 30-40 k/s). Wherever i go on the net people say their modem is 150kilobytes/s etc. So can you tell me how you speeded up yours. i will try the speedguide.net patch, i tried the generic but i will do my own settings this time now.

You also have to understand and clearify what 'modem' or 'modems' you're talking about. "Wherever i go on the net people say their modem is 150kilobytes/s etc." This more than likely means that they have a 1.2Mbit connection. My Cisco DSL modem (router) is capable of 640kbps. Which, by the way, is only 80KBps. Remember the difference between KiloBITS per second and KiloBYTES per second. There are subtle differences in labeling these. Example: 10kbps is 10 thousand BITS per second. 10KBps is 10 thousand BYTES per second. 8 bits = 1 byte Bits / 8 = Bytes Bytes * 8 = Bits This means that if someone says that they get 150 kilobytes / s (per second), then you multiply 150,000 by 8 and you will get the bits per second or what's known as the effective connection rate. Now, if someone said they have a 56k modem...remember that FCC only allows 53kbps max and most modems don't connect THAT fast. Say that their connection rate is 49.333 (like the average is); divide that by eight and you'll have the kilobytes per second that they can download if all connection criteria (servers, routers, isp, etc...) are good. So, if they found a file that was 6.17 kilobyte file, how long would it take for them to get it? 1 sec if conditions are good...faulty connection, bad weather, weak server.....all of this could make it take longer. If conditions are bad for the given site chosen, then it's been known to take up to 10 mins to get the same file. I hope this sheds more light on this subject.

Thanks but i already knw all that.