According to a recent global broadband speed test, conducted by Oxford University and Oviedo University, financed by Cisco Systems, Inc. and using data from Speedtests.net, several of the most advanced countries have less than optimal broadband to offer.  In fact, Italy, Spain, Great Britain, and Australia all have broadband quality that rates lower in overall speed than is necessary to use the internet to its full potential.  Their average internet speeds are such that they make file sharing, streaming video, and a variety of other internet staples, frustratingly slow and hard to use. 

As a matter of fact, the United States (which many think is the leader in internet technology and service) didn’t even crack the top ten of countries with superior bandwidth quality.  It came in 16th in fact, with an average internet speed that is almost thirty times slower than the number one country in the broadband speed test, Japan.

Yet our ISPs (internet service providers) will advertise and sell us packages that boast much larger bandwidth speeds than we can obtain.  There is only one way to know for sure at what speed your computer is actually uploading and downloading data from the internet, and that is to conduct a broadband speed test.
Free broadband speed test sites are numerous on the internet, a Google search of the phrase will return over three million hits, and they make it simple and fast for even the most technically illiterate computer user to conduct a test.  There aren’t any software downloads needed and your computer comes with all the hardware already.  Running a broadband speed test is easy and it lets you know for sure what your computer’s actual performance speed is.
Simply go to one of the free sites, choose their server that is geographically closest to your own computer, and click on the “begin test” button.  The website’s server will then upload a data package for your computer to download.  Once the package has been received, your computer will send it back to the server.  The server will log the speed at which you downloaded the package and the speed at which you uploaded the package, and an assessment of your true bandwidth speed will be created.
When the information is returned to you, you can compare the rates at which you are actually transferring data to the rates that your ISP is charging you for.  If everything synchs up alright, you have a problem on your end.  You should run spyware and virus scans, clear your cache, and run the broadband speed test again to see if the results are better.
If the data doesn’t synch up to what your plan with your ISP is supposed to provide, contact your ISP and see what they can do to fix the situation.  In most cases it is an easily fixable network glitch.  If, after being contacted, your ISP does nothing to fix the problem and you continue to have slow speeds, you should consider switching your provider.