We are working on a cloud speed test. This speedtest functions by using flash to download a 1MB test file and upload 1/2 MB to and from various cloud services. It then measures the amount of time it takes to complete those operations and provides a transfer rate for each.
What we are hoping to accomplish with this is to both allow users the measure their bandwidth performance against various cloud services, and also to aggregate this data in order to provide a more accurate analysis of the bandwidth performance those cloud services provide. In the previous blog post we summarized bandwidth performance where we used pingdom over a period of a couple months as a means of measurement. The speedtest will provide us with a much larger and more diverse test population. The end result we are looking for is to be able to allow users to view overall, time-based and geographically targeted bandwidth performance measurements for public clouds and services.
The speedtest is still very much in beta form. It does not currently allow you to filter the cloud services you'd like to test. However, it is mostly functional and we'd appreciate anyone trying it out and providing feedback. If you allow the test to run all the way through, it will download about 40 MB and upload 10 MB to cloud services and provide you with transfer rates for each based on your Internet connection.
