How to figure out just how fast your current Internet connection really is. Well a great way of determining this is by making use of the fantastic online web service speedtest.net, brought to us by Ookla, which aims to measure three important keys which determine the overall quality and performance of your Internet connection.

The first measurement speedtest.net takes a look at is your physical download speed, measuring just how fast data is sent from the Internet to your computer. Next comes upload speed which is simply the measurement of the speed at which data is sent from your computer up to the Internet. Lastly, ping or latency if you will, tells us how long in milliseconds it takes for a small piece of data to be sent from your computer to the Internet and back.

Launching the test from the website is as easy as clicking on the big Begin Test button and pretty soon the slick flash-driven interface will be running its tests against a selectable host server, reporting back in realtime and at the end of the short run, present to you a downloadable results image with your measurements across the three key areas.

Speedtest.net also maintains a nice history feature for your particular IP address as well as an interesting world map that compares the results across the globe.

Needless to say, Africa doesn’t perform particularly well on this one! :/

Related Link: http://www.speedtest.net/