There are several types of ADSL broadband speed test that can help you know different aspects of the broadband service.
If you think that only one test may be not so accurate, here are several broadband speed test tools we collected from UK web sites.
ThinkBroadband Speed Test – A broadband speed test from a well-known website on Broadband
Audit My PC - Good Broadband Speed Test and provide speed tools for other web sites
BBMax – Well reputed broadband speed tester
MySpeed - Another broadband speed tester
DSL Zone UK - Another one
Internet Frog - Use graphs to show your broadband speedThere are also dozens of test tools available to estimate the MAX Speed your phone line can achieve
ADSL Line Speed Calculator - ADSL maximum line speed estimator
Max Speed Tool
- Find your line stats and shove them into this site to find your theoretical maximum speed. Note: If you are already on the 8Mb Max service, there is no point in using this checker. It is only for people on 512Kb - 2Mb.
ADSL Line Check - Check the potential ADSL speed. The line speed a customer is likely to achieve can be estimated based on the distance between the address of the postcode entered and the nearest telephone exchange.
All the speeds displayed in the broadband offer specification are maximum potential speeds. And it’s possible that your phone line can’t reach that number. By using this Line Speed Check, you can have an approximate figure on the top connection speed you are most likely to achieve.
Please Note: The speed tests usually take 2 to 5 minutes. Please be patient and when running any of the speed tests, please ensure you are not downloading any files, using any applications that send or download data or running any other programmes apart from the internet browser.
A way to use BT Broadband Speed Test to measure your broadband
Broadband4lhanbryde suggest a way to use BT Broadband Speed Test to measure the speed of your broadband, whatever your broadband is. This broadband speed test bypasses your ISP, so even if you are not using BT, you can still use this way to test your ADSL speed.
The BT Broadband Speed Test will test the connection from your home to your local exchange and onto the BT backbone. This will test the speed of your connection without going anywhere near your Internet Service provider. If you get slow speeds here, this could be down to a number of reasons, but it's worth noting that problem here have nothing to do with your Internet Service Provider so don't go blaming them.
Common problems which can result in a slow BT Speed Test result may be poor quality wiring in your home. Where possible try plugging your modem / ADSL Router into the master socket of your home and running the test again. If the BT Speed Test is still showing poor results then this is likely one of two things. One, you have a poor quality phone line and unless speeds are less than about 128kbit/sec download BT are not obliged to do anything about it. But it may be worth reporting a fault if the results are much lower than what your connection should be but be warned BT may charge you £60 if they don't find a problem with your line.
The second probable cause is contention. An awful word that speeds to be springing up more often than ever these days. Basically Contention problems at this stage means that your exchange is probably overloaded with users in your local area and needs upgraded by BT. Broadband contention basically means that the capacity at the exchange and/or Internet service provider is shared with X number of other people. For example if you have a 2Mbit connection on a contention ratio of 20:1 this means that if everyone connected to your local exchange was running their connection at full capacity for downloads your speed could essentially drop to a 20th of the maximum speed because you are sharing your 2Mbit speed with 19 other people. Previously the contention ratio hasn't been too much of a concern for users but with more and more people using ADSL Broadband the speeds at peak times can slow down a bit, and this is most likely contention causing a bottle neck at the exchange rather than problem with your Internet Service Provider.
Running the BT Broadband Speed Test
BT Broadband Speed Test completely bypasses your Internet Service Provider. Therefore we must use a different username and password for connecting our ADSL Broadband connection to the BT Broadband Speed Test.
Although it is possible to run the BT speed test from any ISP by going to the following page : http://www.speedtester.bt.com Running this test will only test the speed going through your current Internet Service Provider (ISP) much like any other speed test. In order to test your line using simply the connection between your home and the Broadband HUB and bypassing your ISP you will need to follow the instructions below for using a special BT Test username/password. This is recommended in order to get a true speed test of your line excluding your ISP. Also by bypassing your ISP this helps diagnose any speed problems you may be experiencing with your ADSL Broadband line.
First thing to do is to find your username password that your use on your modem/router to logon your Broadband connection. I'm afraid you will have to find this yourself as there are far too many combinations of modem/router to list here.
Once you have found the login page, take note of what the username and password currently are. It's not a good idea to loose this information.
BT Broadband Speed Test login details
Next we need to change the username to : speedtest@speedtest_domain and leave the password blank. (no password).
Then simply establish the connection with the new details. Once the connection has been established, load up a suitable web browser and navigate to the following website address: http://217.35.209.142
Running the BT Broadband Speed Test
From here things are relatively straight forward. Enter in your phone number (this is the number that your ADSL Broadband connection is attached to NOT a contact number like a mobile) and press go to start the BT Broadband Speed Test. DO NOT do anything while the BT Broadband Speed Test is running just incase it interferes with the results (well ok you can still breath just don't play around with the mouse or anything.)
It's worth running the BT Broadband Speed Test a few times just to make sure you get a consistent result.
Once you've finished the tests and taken note of the results, find your way back to where you changed the username/password for the BT Broadband Speed Test and update the details with those that were provided by your Internet Service Provider. Finally re-connect your ADSL Broadband Connection with the details from your Internet service Provider and check that everything is working as normal, you can browse the web and collect email e.t.c.
And another suggestion is, you can run this BT broadband speed test several times in different time of the day to avoid such instance that the network is very busy. If possible, try to run it late at night when the network is not busy.