Comment puis-je effectuer efficacement un test de performance de ma connexion Internet?

Right now I’m in the process of possibly switching from a Cable provider to a DSL provider. I have both connections live, and before I cancel one or the other, I’m wanting to do some exhaustive testing of the internet connection. I have three major questions:

1. What are some approaches that I can quantitatively test the speeds (both up and down) and quality of my internet connections (ping, time connection is down, etc,.)?
2. Are there other consideration that should be taken when testing an internet connection?
3. Are there any tools that can do this automatically and capture results?

Overall, I’m looking to compare the two connections over multiple periods of time such as peak hours (1600 – 2100 in my area), and with different loads such as streaming movies, uploading files, etc,.

The Broadband Tests and Tools from DSLReports.com include a simple speed test, as well as long- and short-term line quality tests:

1. Speed Tests

Test your maximum upload speed and download speed from several geographically distributed locations. Java, Flash and iPhone speed test (100% browser) available.

2. Smokeping

Intensively monitor an IP address for 24 or more hours to review packet loss and/or excessive latency variability - from three different US locations 3. Line Quality – Ping Test

Test latency, jitter and packet loss to your IP address, including identification of any problems en-route to you.

The speed test requires Flash or Java; the other two require that your IP is pingable.

In the absence of a specialized tool for long-term speed tests, you could use a command-line network retriever (e.g. Wget or Wget for Windows) and download uncompressable test files with a shell/batch script.

The nearest test files to Arizona I could find are from speedtest.dal01.softlayer.com (Dallas, TX) and speedtest.sea01.softlayer.com (Seattle, WA).