Speed Test

I wanted to test my Internet speed at the office. I asked Verizon to provide the data but since they have time and more then 3 month later I'm still waiting, I started playing with some online tools.
I picked speakeasy's speed test as my testing tool and found some puzzling results...

I used my PC to test different browsers (FireFox 3.5.4 & IE6) using different path (firewall as default gateway & ISA 2006 proxy server with GFI WebMonitor 2009).
I have 2 T1s coming from Verizon on a multilink router. I'm not going to start calculate what I should expect, why and how. If you're into this data use a Bandwidth calculator.

First let's see how IE6 did with Proxy enabled

This is theoretically the slowest path since it's not only routed through another server before hitting the firewall but it is also processed by WebMonitor.

Disabling the proxy settings and running the same test on IE6 resulted in the following

While the upload speed was significantly faster I was surprised by the download result. Just can't be!

I had to test FireFox and compare the results

And once more just to make sure I'm getting valid numbers

At this point I realized that this test is worthless. Other then the local factors like other users and services that download & upload, the measurement is flexible and depend on so many factors that I just can't trust it.