Windows XP Service Pack 3 Available

Windows XP Service Pack 3 was released to none of the fanfare that we saw with XP SP2. My evaluation so far? If you're installing it in only one PC, use Automatic Update. If you have more than one, then get the ISO and burn it.

Network Speed Tests

NPAD Servers

NPAD is a very detailed bandwidth test for measuring TCP transfer capabilities. It requires you to have a target computer in mind, and do a rudimentary PING of that target to note the round trip time in milliseconds. Next up, you decide what speed (target rate) you and your target computer are supposed to transfer at, which is the upload speed of the server in a one-way system, or the lowest of the two ends upload speeds for a two-way system.

Pick one that is closest to you or your target:

• University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), Boulder Colorado http://npad.ucar.edu:8000/
• Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center, Pennsylvania http://kirana.psc.edu/NPAD/

Web100 based Network Diagnostic Tool (NDT)

For a more general speed test, forget about that crap at BroadbandReports.com and such and use this test, so generously funded with our taxpayer dollars:

• Oak Ridge National Laboratories, Knoxville, TN http://www.csm.ornl.gov/~dunigan/java/misc/tcpbw.html
• Argonne National Labs, Argonne, IL http://miranda.ctd.anl.gov:7123/

Bear in mind that I live and work in the Midwest, so if you live someplace else, visit one of these pages, then scroll down to Other Publicly Accessible NDT Servers.

Intel NAS Performance Toolkit

This one is for traffic performance across the Internal network. I haven't tried it out, yet, but be asured I will, and maybe even post screenshots. In the meantime, if you get it, don't hesitate to leace a comment on it, or anything else, for that matter!