Thinkbroadband offers extra broadband tools

Thinkbroadband has added extra functions to the broadband speed tool it launched almost two years ago.

Users of the tbbMeter, developed for the independent broadband news and advice site, can now merge their speed test stats from multiple computers.

This helps families with more than one computer track usage, although it will not cover games consoles.

Another enhancement, the Broadband Quality Monitor, which is currently in public beta, allows users to track the performance of their broadband connection by checking latency and packet loss.

Latency is the time it takes for a piece of information (a 'packet') to get from servers to a broadband connection, and back. Packet loss is when bits of information are lost in transit and have to be re-sent.

These can cause problems with various 'realtime' applications such as online gaming, video conferencing, internet telephony, etc.

Sebastien Lahtinen, co-founder of thinkbroadband, said: “A system on the thinkbroadband network 'pings' a broadband user once a second, every second.

"The user's router will respond back with a 'pong' and the time this takes is measured. This tool is a good indication of congestion. We don't yet have 'by local exchange' or 'ISP specific' graphs but plan to develop them as we know these will be very useful.”

However, he highlighted that this tool is currently only suitable for users who have a static IP address, but hopes to make it work for dynamic IP addresses later.

Another new feature which will allow users to split ‘internet’ and ‘local’ traffic is also in the works according to Sebastien Lahtinen.

“It will be very useful as it means anyone with a local hard drive or more than one computer will not have traffic on their local network counted,” he explained.