With so many Web browsers to choose from, how do you determine the correct one for you? For many people, it's all about speed. Every Web browser processes data differently, and this ultimately determines the speed at which Web pages display inside of the browser. If speed is a critical factor for you, you can compare the speed of each browser using one of the many free online speed tests. When the speed test is initiated, a packet is downloaded from a server and then re-uploaded. As the test runs, the download and upload speed is measured. At the conclusion of the test, a report is displayed containing the speed of your browser and Internet connection, in megabits per second. This number is actually deceiving, as one megabit is equivalent to 0.125 megabytes, so a 40-megabit per minute connection is actually only downloading data at about 5 megabytes per minute.
Instructions
1. Visit an Internet connection speed test website in the browser that you would like to test. Three sample websites have been included in the Resources portion of this article.
2. Click on the name of a city to connect to the server in that city. Some speed tests do not provide you with an option to select the server's city.
3. Click "Begin Test" to start testing the browser speed. The test runs automatically, requires no user input and takes approximately one minute to complete.
4. Locate the download and upload speeds provided in the test results.
5. Open a different Web browser and repeat the test if desired. Be sure to run the test using the same server city, as different servers may provide different results, depending on the current activity of the server.
Tags: speed test, browser speed, download upload, Internet connection, server city