Monitor Your Internet Connection! - Part II

The way to get around this is to track the speed of your connection  all the time, when you're connected to your ISP. That sounds as if it might be tricky, but Windows provides a tool for the Job: System Monitor.

 You'll normally find this in the System Tool section of the Accessories menu, but if you don't see the program, it's easy to install. Open Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel and click on the Windows setup tab. Find and double - click on system tools, check the System Monitor box, and click OK. (Note: Windows CD needed)

 When you run system monitor, you will see a selection of blank Graph. It's unlikely the program will be set up as you want, so start by going to edit > remove Item. Select all the entries in the list (click on the top one, then hold down [Shift] and click on the bottom entry), then click OK.

 Next, select Edit > Add item. You'll see a number of intresting catagories of things you can graph. The File System and Memory Manager are worth a look, but right now it's Dial-Up Adapter you're intrested in. Click on it, then hold down the [Ctrl] key and choose Bytes Received/Second, Bytes transmitted/Second abd Connection Speed for the Item column. Click OK to finish.

That's the setup done, so now all you need to do is connect to your ISP. Visit Web sites as usual, switching back to the System Monitor occasionally to see what's going on.

IMPORTANT NOTE: when it comes to interpreting the figures, remember that the Bytes Received/Second figure does't take account of the data compression achieved by your modem. This means the graph might show you a rate higher than your actual connection speed if the file compresses well (TXT files, Web pages and so on). Zip files and EXE files produce more reliable figures. (Try downloading MP3, zip files for a for reliable speed count)

to be continued...

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