How to Test Your Internet Connection Speed or Cellular Data Speed

How to Test Your Internet Connection Speed or Cellular Data Speed

By Unknown   00:19   No comments:

How fast is your Internet connection? Sure, your Internet service provider has given you some numbers, and your cellular provider probably says you get blazing fast 4G LTE. But how fast is it, actually?

There’s a good chance you’re not getting the Internet connection speed you’re paying for, but maybe you are. Here’s how to find out.

What This Does

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You can’t just rely on the download speeds you see when downloading files and doing other normal things. Download speeds you’ll see depend on a lot of things, including the remote server and the number of “hops” (Internet routers) in between you and the server. It may not even just be the Internet infrastructure itself — the remote server may only want to give you so much download bandwidth, or it may be bogged down.

Instead, you’ll need to test this a bit more scientifically. The ideal would be to find a server nearby you, one that has a large amount of bandwidth available. You could then try to download from it and upload to it, seeing just how high your download and upload speeds could reach. This ensures you’d just be measuring the last-mile connection speed between you and your ISP as accurately as possible.

That’s why you need dedicated tools for measuring your connection speed.

Best Practices For Connection Speed Testing

If you want to get the most accurate result possible, you can’t just run the tool once without thinking about it. Here’s what you really need to do:

Ensure You Aren’t Using Your Internet Connection: Is someone else streaming Netflix in the other room, or are you downloading files via BitTorrent on your computer? Pause all these applications using your connection before performing a speed-test. Ensure the speed-test application is the only thing using your connection, and you’ll be able to measure it more accurately. If the tool can’t saturate your connection, the numbers you’ll see will be low.

On a smartphone or any other type of mobile data connection, just ensure your device isn’t downloading or uploading data in the background.

Measure More Than Once: A single measurement isn’t the be-all, end-all of connection speeds. Measure more than once, preferably at different times during the day. For example, you may have faster Internet connection speeds during the middle of the night when everyone is sleeping and slower connection speeds in the evening when your neighbors are home from work and using their home Internet connections.

On a smartphone or any other type of mobile data connection, your speed will depend on how many people around you are using data, as well as the signal quality in your area, and other factors. Move around between speed-tests and you can see how your connection speed varies between different locations. As with a wired Internet connection, the time of day can affect things — you’ll probably have a slower connection speed at lunch time in the central business district than you will if you tried the speed test ta the same location on Sunday when no one else is around.

How to Test Your Connection Speed

The actual process of measuring your connection speed is simple. The gold standard for this isSpeedtest.net, and that’s the one we recommend you use. A quick web search reveals many other tools, with even Comcast and AT&T offering their own speed-test applications. Using it on your computer is as simple as visiting the website and clicking the “Begin Test” button.

On a smartphone or tablet, free Speedtest.net applications are available. Download them from your app store of choice, launch them, and test your speed. Remember, if your smartphone is connected to a Wi-Fi network, the app will test the speed of the WI-Fi network. Disconnect from the Wi-Fi network and it will test your smartphone’s data network.

Warning: Using any sort of speed-test app involves both downloading and uploading some data. If you have a limited amount of mobile data, this will count toward your cap. The app works by attempting to download and upload data at maximum speed for several seconds, maxing out your connection. It could use as much as 20 MB of data per speed test, or even more — the faster your connection, the more data it will use. Take this into account.

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Yes, there are other speed-testing websites and apps out there. But they all work in a similar way — they provide very fast, nearby servers that attempt to max out your connection. Under these ideal conditions, they can provide you with a reasonably accurate estimate of just how fast your connection is when it comes to both uploading and downloading.

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Networking Cables

Networking Cables

By Unknown   21:46   1 comment:

Networking cables are used to connect one network device to other network devices or to connect two or more computers to share printer, scanner etc. Different types of network cables like Coaxial cable, Optical fiber cable, Twisted Pair cables are used depending on the network's topology, protocol and size. The devices can be separated by a few meters (e.g. via Ethernet) or nearly unlimited distances (e.g. via the interconnections of the Internet).

While wireless may be the wave of the future, most computer networks today still utilize cables to transfer signals from one point to another.

                    

Twisted pair

Twisted pair cabling is a form of wiring in which pairs of wires (the forward and return conductors of a single circuit) are twisted together for the purposes of canceling outelectromagnetic interference (EMI) from other wire pairs and from external sources. This type of cable is used for home and corporate Ethernet networks.

There are two types of twisted pair cables: shielded, unshielded.

Fiber Optic cable

An optical fiber cable consists of a center glass core surrounded by several layers of protective material. The outer insulating jacket is made of Teflon or PVC to prevent interference. It is expensive but has higher bandwidth and can transmit data over longer distances.

Coaxial cable

Coaxial lines confine the electromagnetic wave to area inside the cable, between the center conductor and the shield. The transmission of energy in the line occurs totally through the dielectric inside the cable between the conductors. Coaxial lines can therefore be bent and twisted (subject to limits) without negative effects, and they can be strapped to conductive supports without inducing unwanted currents in them and though.

The most common use for coaxial cables is for television and other signals with bandwidth of multiple megahertz. Although in most homes coaxial cables have been installed for transmission of TV signals, new technologies (such as the ITU-T G.hn standard) open the possibility of using home coaxial cable for high-speed home networking applications (Ethernet over coax).

In the 20th century they carried long distance telephone connections.

Patch cable

A patch cable is an electrical or optical cable used to connect one electronic or optical device to another for signal routing. Devices of different types (e.g. a switch connected to a computer, or a switch connected to a router) are connected with patch cords. It is a very fast connection speed. Patch cords are usually produced in many different colors so as to be easily distinguishable,^[2] and are relatively short, perhaps no longer than two meters.

Ethernet (crossover) cable

An Ethernet crossover cable is a type of Ethernet cable used to connect computing devices together directly where they would normally be connected via a network switch, hub orrouter, such as directly connecting two personal computers via their network adapters. Some newer Ethernet devices support the use of cross-over cables in the place of patch cables.

Power lines

Although power wires are not designed for networking applications, new technologies like Power line communication allows these wires to also be used to interconnect home computers, peripherals or other networked consumer products. On December 2008, the ITU-T adopted Recommendation G.hn/G.9960 as the first worldwide standard for high-speed powerline communications.^[3] G.hn also specifies communications over phonelines and coaxial cables.

for more information you can download this ppt on cabling.

network cabling PPT

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Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life

Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life

By Unknown   22:57   No comments:

Laptops tend to lose their charm quickly when you’re constantly looking for the nearest power outlet to charge up.  How do you keep your battery going for as long as possible?  Here are 15 easy ways to do so.

1. Defrag regularly -  The faster your hard drive does its work – less demand you are going to put on the hard drive and your battery.  Make your hard drive as efficient as possible bydefragging it regularly. (but not while it’s on battery of course!) Mac OSX is better built to handle fragmentation so it may not be very applicable for Apple systems.

2. Dim your screen – Most laptops come with the ability to dim your laptop screen.  Some even come with ways to modify CPU and cooling performance.  Cut them down to the lowest level you can tolerate to squeeze out some extra battery juice.

3. Cut down on programs running in the background.  Itunes, Desktop Search, etc.  All these add to the CPU load and cut down battery life.  Shut down everything that isn’t crucial when you’re on battery.

4. Cut down external devices – USB devices (including your mouse) & WiFi drain down your laptop battery.  Remove or shut them down when not in use.  It goes without saying that charging other devices (like your iPod) with your laptop when on battery is a surefire way of quickly wiping out the charge on your laptop battery.

5. Add more RAM - This will allow you to process more with the memory your laptop has, rather than relying on virtual memory.  Virtual memory results in hard drive use, and is much less power efficient. Note that adding more RAM will consume more energy, so this is most applicable if you do need to run memory intensive programs which actually require heavy usage of virtual memory.

6. Run off a hard drive rather than CD/DVD - As power consuming as hard drives are, CD and DVD drives are worse.  Even having one in the drive can be power consuming.  They spin, taking power, even when they?re not actively being used.  Wherever possible, try to run on virtual drives using programs like Alcohol 120% rather than optical ones.

7.  Keep the battery contacts clean:  Clean your battery’s metal contacts every couple of months with a cloth moistened with rubbing alcohol.  This keeps the transfer of power from your battery more efficient.

8. Take care of your battery – Exercise the Battery.  Do not leave a charged battery dormant for long periods of time.  Once charged, you should at least use the battery at least once every two to three weeks. Also, do not let a Li-On battery completely discharge. (Discharing is only for older batteries with memory effects)

9. Hibernate not standby – Although placing a laptop in standby mode saves some power and you can instantly resume where you left off, it doesn’t save anywhere as much power as the hibernate function does.  Hibernating a PC will actually save your PC’s state as it is, and completely shut itself down.

10. Keep operating temperature down - Your laptop operates more efficiently when it’s cooler.  Clean out your air vents with a cloth or keyboard cleaner, or refer to some extra tips by LapTopMag.com.

11. Set up and optimize your power options – Go to ‘Power Options’ in your windows control panel and set it up so that power usage is optimized (Select the ‘max battery’ for maximum effect).

12. Don’t multitask – Do one thing at a time when you’re on battery.  Rather than working on a spreadsheet, letting your email client run in the background and listening to your latest set of MP3′s, set your mind to one thing only.  If you don’t you’ll only drain out your batteries before anything gets completed!

13. Go easy on the PC demands – The more you demand from your PC.  Passive activities like email and word processing consume much less power than gaming or playing a DVD.  If you’ve got a single battery charge – pick your priorities wisely.

14. Get yourself a more efficient laptop -  Laptops are getting more and more efficient in nature to the point 

where some manufacturers are talking about all day long batteries.  Picking up a newer more efficient laptop to replace an aging one is usually a quick fix.

15. Prevent the Memory Effect - If you’re using a very old laptop, you’ll want to prevent the ‘memory effect’ – Keep the battery healthy by fully charging and then fully discharging it at least once every two to three weeks. Exceptions to the rule are Li-Ion batteries (which most laptops have) which do not suffer from the memory effect.

Bonus Tip #1: Turn off the autosave function.  MS-Word’s and Excel’s autosave functions are great but because they keep saving regular intervals, they work your hard driver harder than it may have to. If you plan to do this, you may want to turn it back on as the battery runs low. While it saves battery life in the beginning, you will want to make sure your work is saved when your battery dies.

Bonus Tip #2: Lower the graphics use. You can do this by changing the screen resolution and shutting off fancy graphic drivers. Graphics cards (video cards) use as much or more power today as hard disks

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How to Set Up a Virtual Private Network with Windows

How to Set Up a Virtual Private Network with Windows

By Unknown   21:47   No comments:

Imagine you are on business overseas working to secure a new account with an offshore supplier. This is a big meeting for you and your company. If you clinch the deal, you are in line for a big promotion. The morning of the presentation, you turn on your laptop and discover your hard drive has crashed. Panicking, you call your office to request an electronic copy of your presentation, but because of the time difference, your call goes unanswered.

However, if you knew how to set up a virtual private network (VPN), you could access the file from any computer in the world! A VPN allows you to connect to a computer from anywhere in the world and access the files.

Steps:

1.  Open your web browser and go to www.whatismyip.com. Write down the IP address. You will need it to configure the client.

2. Click the Start button and click Run.

3. Type control and hit Enter.

4. Click Network and Internet Connections.

5. Click Network Connections.

6. Click Create a New Connection, which is the first option on the left toolbar.

7. The New Connection Wizard will open. Click Next.

8. Choose Set up an advanced connection, the last element on the list. ClickNext.

9. Choose Accept incoming connections. Click Next.

10. You will see the Devices for Incoming Connections screen. Do not select anything on this screen. Click Next.

11. Select Allow virtual private connections. Click Next.

12. Select to whom you want to give access. Click Next. If a user is not listed, you will have to add an account. See “Related Wikihows” for more information.

13. Do not change anything on the Networking Software screen. Click Next.

That’s it! Your computer is now set up to allow for VPNs. Click Finish to complete the wizard.

Now you can enjoy the free VPN services.

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Bluetooth Technology explained

Bluetooth Technology explained

By Unknown   01:51   No comments:

Bluetooth wireless technology (IEEE 802.15.1) is a short-range communications technology originally intended to replace the cables connecting portable and/or fixed devices while maintaining high levels of security. The key features of Bluetooth technology are threefold: robustness, low power, and low cost. Bluetooth has been designed in a uniform way. This way it enables a wide range of devices to connect and communicate with each other by using the Bluetooth wireless communication protocol. The Bluetooth technology has achieved global acceptance in such a way that any Bluetooth-enabled electronic device, almost everywhere in the world, is able to connect to other Bluetooth-enabled devices in its proximity. Bluetooth-enabled electronic devices connect and communicate wirelessly through short-range, ad hoc networks known as piconets. Each device can simultaneously communicate with up to seven other devices within a single piconet. Each device can also belong to several piconets simultaneously. Piconets are established dynamically and automatically as Bluetooth-enabled devices enter and leave radio proximity. One of the main strengths of the Bluetooth wireless technology is the ability to handle data and voice transmissions simultaneously. This enables users to use a hands-free headset for voice calls, printing, fax capabilities, synchronizing PDA’s, laptops, and mobile phone applications to name a few.
An important aspect of this thesis is about the scalability of Bluetooth broadcasting. Since scalability can sometimes be a rather vague concept, we give a short explanation of the term. An important aspect of software products is how they are able to cope with growth. For example, how does the system handle an increase in users or data traffic? This property of a software system is usually referred to as scalability. A more detailed specification of the concept is given by André Bondi, who defines it as follows: ‘Scalability is a desirable attribute of a network, system, or process. The concept connotes the ability of a system to accommodate an increasing number of elements or objects, to process growing volumes of work gracefully, and/or to be susceptible to enlargement.’ Whenever a system meets these requirements we can say that thesystem scales. In this thesis scalability comes down to the question if the system is capable of dealing with large groups of users equipped with Bluetooth enabled devices capable of receiving simple text messages.

Passive Broadcasting

The first type of business deals with broadcasting from a central location, which we will call passive broadcasting. Most of these companies sell both the hardware and software to enable this. For example, BlueCasting by Filter WorldWide, one of the major players in the market which made the news in August 2005 when they distributed merchandise for the British pop band Coldplay, offers a product family divided into four types of systems. They offer solutions for small retail shops, one-off events such as music festivals, and even larger areas such as airports and train stations. The latest descendant in the family is a system that provides an interactive touchscreen allowing users to interact directly with the system. BlueCasting is an example of a product that comes with both hardware (one or more BlueCast Servers) and software (BlueCast Campaign Management System) which is used to provide remote setup, maintenance and reporting.
Besides this type of companies, i.e. the ones that are selling the total package, other companies have dedicated themselves to providing just the hardware. An example is BlueGiga. According to their website their BlueGiga Access Servers are used by more than 350 Bluetooth Marketing companies in more than 65 countries. They sell two lines of products: Bluetooth Modules and Bluetooth Access Servers. The modules are described as ‘completely integrated, certified, high-performance Radio Frequency products including all needed Bluetooth profiles’. Access Servers are sold in the form of Access Points (up to 7 connections) and Access Servers (up to 21 connections). Besides this they also sell the BlueGiga Solution Manager (BSM). This is a web-based remote management and monitoring platform for BlueGiga Access Servers that can be used to simultaneously upgrade, monitor and configure a large number of BlueGiga Access Servers, instead of configuring each device one-by-one.

Bluetooth Core System Architecture :

The transceiver operates in the globally unlicensed ISM band at 2.4 GHz. The bit rateis 1 Megabit per second and can be boosted to 2 or 3 Mb/s with Enhanced Data Rate[EDR]. The 79 channels in the band are ordered from channel number 0-78 and arespaced 1 MHz beginning at 2402 GHz. Bluetooth-enabled devices that arecommunicating share a radio channel and are synchronized to a common clock andfrequency hopping pattern. Frequency hopping is used to make the protocol morerobust to interference from other devices operating in the same band. The physicalchannel is sub-divided into time units known as slots. Data is transmitted betweenBluetooth-enabled devices in packets. These packets are situated in the slots. Packetscan fill one or more consecutive slots, allowing larger data chunks to be transmitted ifthe circumstances admit this. Bluetooth is primarily designed for low power consumption and affordability and hasa relatively short range (1, 10 or 100 meters). It makes use of low-cost transceivermicrochips that are embedded in each device.

The Bluetooth Baseband is the part of the Bluetooth system that specifies or implements the medium access and physical layer procedures between Bluetooth devices. Several devices can be joined together in what is called a piconet. One device owns the clock and the frequency hopping pattern and is called the master. Two or more piconets can be joined in what is called a scatternet. To form a scatternet, some units, called gateways, belong to different piconets. Such a unit can be a slave unit in more than one piconet but can act as a master in only one. Besides this, it can transmit and receive data in only one piconet at a time. To visualize this, imagine the following. You are on the phone with a friend, using your Bluetooth headset, while at the same time you are uploading pictures from your computer to your phone. Your phone now acts as a gateway, being the master in the piconet with your headset and slave in the one with your computer.

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Make Your PC FASTER,,,, Guaranteed..!!!

Make Your PC FASTER,,,, Guaranteed..!!!

By Unknown   01:49   No comments:

1. First, run a scandisk or checkdisk. Let Windows fix any errors.

2. Run a disk cleanup utility...this will flush your temporary internet folder, trash can, temp system files, etc.

3. Delete any garbage files or data...if possible, run a Duplicate File Finder program.

4. Run Defrag on all partitions (NOTE: run this after you have deleted all trash and excess files!)

5. Run a registry cleaner utility and delete or get rid of any orphaned entries in that registry.

6. Check your existing swap file for it's size and location (*will explain location later in the post). If you have a lot of ram (i.e. 1 gig and over) set this swap file to something small, like 250 mb. The reason is that this will force Windows to load more into memory, resulting in faster performance (note: some games and applications actually require a certain sized swap file so check your applications performance after making a size adjustment for any error messages.)

7. Under XP, you can tell Windows to use Classic Style on your desktop, - this will remove the neat single click and internet-style desktop but for lower end systems this will improve performance in other areas, such as gaming and multi-tasking.

8. Run msconfig and under start up and only keep the programs that are essential to load in the tray icon (and hence stay resident in memory). Unchecked anything else non-essential, like an ATI or Nvidia control panel, QuickTime utility, Real Audio, etc.

9. Upgrade drivers! Check for the latest BIOS, video, motherboard, sound, etc drivers from the manufacturers. Alot of my friends had chipsets on their motherboard that had advanced disk management capabilities or AGP port settings but the drivers weren't loaded for them so they were never being used. A simple upgrade realized a noticeable difference. For instance, they didn't have the latest driver for their AGP port so it was set to 1x, instead of being used at 4x!

10. (OK, so this won't speed up your PC but it could save you alot of time and trouble later on!) After making all these improvements, make a working backup! I use Ghost, but for XP users you can also use System Restore...

-FOR ADVANCED USERS-

1. Take a look under the hood (for IDE owners). How are your IDE devices configured? If you have more than 1 hard drive, put the master hard drive on the primary IDE channel and the secondary hard drive on the secondary IDE channel (most motherboards have two IDE channels).

2. Place all CDROM drives, DVD readers etc. on the secondary IDE channel (or SCSI bus, etc). This will reduce I/O contention with your master hard drive which should have your OS and apps installed...

3. Remember when I mentioned the location of the swap file? OK, if you have 2 hard drives and you have one on the primary IDE channel and the other on the secondary IDE channel, move the swap file to a partition ON THE SECOND hard drive (on the secondary IDE channel). This will greatly improve system performance as the PC can write to the swap file while loading and running OS and system commands without I/O contention on the primary IDE channel!

4. Take a look under the hood (for SCSI owners) What kind of SCSI do you have? If it's the newer Ultra 160/320 etc cards then guess what? Any devices placed on the same bus will automatically default to the slowest drive on the chain...this means that if you have say, an Ultra 160 SCSI card, and it has an Ultra 160 drive (capable of transferring 160 mb/sec) on the same chain as a SCSI cdrom drive (capable of only 40 mb/sec) then the whole bus slows down to the 40 mb/sec speed...use different chains for the slower devices and maximize those hard drives!

5. Run a utility like WCPUID and check the settings...is your CPU/front speed bus/AGP port running as fast as they should be? If not, check your drivers and BIOS configuration options. Also, are all of your chip set features enabled? If not, then enable them! (usually done in your BIOS!)

6. Dig in to the BIOS...check settings like boot order, for example...is it checking the floppy first? Change this! Select your order to reflect the hard drive first, then CD, then floppy for a noticeable boot time improvement. Also disable any non-used on board peripherals...for instance, - does your motherboard come with an on-board NIC card? Guess what, if you don't use that NIC card and it is enabled it will eat up valuable CPU cycles and can be detrimental to your systems' performance. DISABLE THAT MUTHA! Also, see if you can play with memory timing and CPU clock frequencies (NOTE! This is for expert users only!) Set these timings to "Aggressive" and see what happens in your games and apps...Also, check to see what your video aperture is set to. If you have a video card with 128 megs of on-board memory, your aperture should be set to this amount too. Read the BIOS owner manual for further non-general performance tricks or improvements! Do you have the latest BIOS firmware version?

7. Under hardware properties, check to see that everything is working properly, and fix any hardware contention issues. You'll see the dreaded yellow exclamation point (!) beside any hardware component that is not working correctly.

8. Evaluate the potential for system/hardware upgrades...usually, the best bang for the buck is adding memory so buy all that you can afford (don't go much above 512 megs for Win 98 or ME). If you have a motherboard with an 8x - capable AGP port but you are using an older 4x video card, consider upgrading to an 8x card. You get the idea here...

9. Quit using software pigs like Norton system utilities, etc. These place files everywhere and can be a real system resource hog on lower end PCs.

10. Did I mention to make a good backup? Do it now! Also, while you're at it, run a good virus program with the latest definitions.

There are more options to make your system faster, such as overclocking, etc. but (just about) everything I've mentioned in this tech post costs you nothing and will result in faster system performance! Good luck and if you have any questions on how to do anything mentioned here, ask a knowledgeable friend or consult a book, - don't mess up something trying to do something you are not sure of!

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