download speeds, opera, seamonkey, firefox--crude test

[cagliostro]

I have made some very crude tests of browsers download speeds.

Ten days ago I finally got DSL broadband. The United States is behind the rest of the world in this, so I know most people think dial-up is back in the dark ages, but many of us had little choice until recently.

I went a little crazy in the first days. Went to www.trle.net and started downloading custom Tomb Raider levels, which can be 80MB or even up to 235MB for the Costa Rica level. I used the browser AT&T provided (an IE replacement) in Windoze. Download speeds of 86KB/sec. Wow! Inredible! Much better than I expected. (Dial-up is typically 2-3KB/sec.)

Then, trembling, I tried to log on in Linux. It turned out to be virtually automatic. In Puppy a couple of clicks, automatic recognition of the ethernet card, and select auto DHCP, and everything is good to go. (In Knoppix one does nothing, just start firefox and browse. In Ubuntu, start System>Administration and auto DHCP, and make eth0 active.)

And I found my download speeds in Linux were about 148KB/sec. So I have never again logged in using Windoze. How things change. I thought 86 KB/sec was great. Now it seems the pits.

I have made some very crude tests of browsers. SeaMonkey seems kludgy to me. Opera is billed as the "smallest, fastest, most innovative browser," and it seems light and fast to me. Firefox 1.07 (used in PCLinuxOS 0.92) seems much lighter than the recent Firefox.

All tests were done using www.trle.net, downloading playable custom Tomb Raider levels.

Puppy Opera, which I thought was light and fast, downloaded at 110KB/sec. I was shocked. I couldn't believe this slow speed, so I assumed the web site was bogged down for other reasons. I waited for the next morning and tried again. This time Opera started at 100KB/sec, but very quickly got up to 136KB/sec and stayed there. Still slow.

Puppy SeaMonkey, tested immediately after Opera, started at 300KB/sec. The speed drops fairly quickly. A 10MB file download will drop the speed to 200KB/sec. For larger files, the speed will drop to 148KB/sec and stay there.

Firefox is very similar to SeaMonkey, as expected, as they come from Mozilla. Firefox seems nimbler than SeaMonkey, but I had trouble getting the sustainable high initial speed burst that SeaMonkey gives. (I tested firefox in Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS). The download speed is 148KB/sec, same as SeaMonkey, but I never saw such a high initial speed burst as I saw in Puppy SeaMonkey.

All this is counter intuitive. I thought Opera and Firefox more nimble than this stupid SeaMonkey, but the download speeds don't bear this out. I have used Puppy Dillo quite a bit because web pages seem to load fast and there is little baggage to slow one down. It doesn't indicate download speeds. My perception of its speediness may not apply to its download speeds.

Download Speed Summation:

Windoze, IE replacement: 86KB/sec
Puppy Opera: 136KB/sec (initial speed 100KB/sec)
Firefox: 148 KB/sec (initial speeds up to 220KB/sec)
Puppy SeaMonkey: 148 KB/sec (initial speed burst up to 300KB/sec)
Puppy Dillo: download speed unknown

[darkerror05]

mabey you could try wget. I would think that woul dbe the fastest.