MySpeed PC Lite

It's tough to know whether your Internet connection needs a speed boost. That's where this very useful program comes in. It measures your upload and download speed, and shows you where that speed lies among a continuum of access methods, from a slow modem to a super-fast connection. It will also graph your speed over time.

Just as useful, though, is its analysis, which provides more details and helps you understand what those speeds mean. So, for example, it will tell you that if your upload speed is 5.66 Mbps, that speed is good for 6 Mbps service, reasonable for 7 Mbps service, but poor if you're paying for 8 Mbps or above. And it also measure your Quality of Service, which tells whether you can sustain your maximum transfer speed. Use the information to determine whether you need a performance boost, run a program such as SG TCP Optimizer to boost your speed, and then run this program again to see whether the boost helped.

--Preston Gralla