Troubleshooting your DSL connection

Monitor your connection

Going out to a Web site and testing your connection is pretty cool and handy, but unfortunately, it's simulated. To test your connection speed under actual working conditions, you'll want to get yourself a connection monitoring utility.

One of the best connection monitoring utilities I've discovered is Ativa Net Meter. This utility continuously monitors broadband connection usage and displays a real-time graph so that you can track the performance of your network connection. Ativa Net Meter's graph can be configured to display upload and download measurements in kbps (Kilobits per second). You can also see the totals for a specific session. As you can see in Figure A, Ativa Net Meter's graph can be configured to display upload and download measurements in kbps (Kilobits per second). You can also see the totals for a specific session.

Figure A: Ativa Net Meter displays a real-time graph that shows you your actual connection rates as you access the Internet.

Ativa Net Meter has several other features that make it a nice utility to have on hand. For example, you can set alerts for dramatic bandwidth changes or even monitor your email.

Contents

1.  Intro      2.  Test your connection speed      3.  Monitor your connection      4.  Tweak your system      5.  Problems caused by line quality      6.  Problems cause by household lighting      7.  External AC/DC power adapters      8.  Resources

• Related stories

• Alerts

Be the first to comment on this article!

• Just In

• Most Popular

Reader Services

Popular Topics

Essentials