modem connection speed indicator
 

Hi!!

I'm looking for a desktop indicator (or whatever you want to call it) that would tell me the speed of the Internet connection.

I am using Fedora Core 1
with a 3COM pcmcia dialup 56k modem.

Going to www.cdnet.com every time is gettin annoying.

Thank You in advance

Ben

Check out gkrellm

I use gkellm, which has a variety of indicators. Sometimes also, xosview. They do not seem to be a part of the fedora distribution, but are easily found and installed.

gkrellm: http://web.wt.net/~billw/gkrellm/gkrellm.html

xosview: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xosview/

modems autonegotiate things like that, and the only way to know for sure, is to force the modem to connect at a specific speed, and none other. with gkrellm, you get a download bar and rate, and if you are downloading uncompressable data, you can figure out your
current connect speed. most importantly, you can tune your modem init string to try to connect to the highest speed where you can usually connect and not get errors. you can also spot if something has gone wrong with your connection, by the bar, and reconnect.
my bar is constant right now at about 4.6k per second with few peaks and spikes. if something goes wrong, it often jumps to something liike 3.2, and 1.6 spiking up and down between those 2. luckily having gkrellm, i know to disconnect and retry when i see that.