testing server speed?

[jason]

im thinking of switching hosts and i wanted to test the speed of some sites that they host, i used to use netmechanic.com to do this but they want you to pay for the service now. any ideas on how i can do this?
thanks

 

[Dean]

Ping

 

[jason]

oh yeah, ping. heh, well even then i don't know what all those numbers and such mean.the faster the ping the better the server? and you can't ping a server every hour for 24 hours can you? unless you do it manually?

 

[Jan]

http://www.hostpulse.com/app/networktools/ping.asp

 

[teppi]

ping only let you know how close you are to the server, it doesn't really mean a server is faster than the others.

 

[sonichost.net]

it doesn't really mean a server is faster than the others.

Very true.

 

[Daniel]

Tracert to see what upstream providers they use, then ask the admin to post some wget results from downloading uumap.tar.Z.

 

[Bruce]

I'm confused here...

Do you want to know the server speed or network speed?

 

[Daniel]

Well there's no way to test server speed unless you want to benchmark the damn thing.

 

[stabme]

omg throw it down a bloody window and check the spedometer