The way that most of these broadband speed test programs work is that they take a file, a standard packet file, and they send it to your one computer. And then it times the download and upload of that one file. Plain and simple. Now, the problem is that it’s measuring the bandwidth of that particular computer. The bandwidth to any one computer can be affected by a handful of bottleneck points. For instance, there could be a bottleneck at that computer’s router. Another computer on the router could be using up most of the main ISPs bandwidth while the other computer’s running the speed test. In that case, the individual computer’s speed test would not be representative of what the ISP is actually delivering to the work group, network, and/or router. So that’s something to consider while you run these speed tests on your individual computers. You might consider jacking into your broadband modem directly to do this speed test.
