Type: Integer
This property enables you to control the balance between testing time and accuracy of results when testing the user’s connection speed.
Note: This property only applies to the Original method of detecting connection speeds. If using the Progressive method see the SpeedCheckTestSeconds property instead.
When testing the user’s connection speed, BrowserHawk by default sends approximately 25KB of compressed data to the browser to test how quickly it can receive the data. Based on this result it can accurately estimate the user’s connection speed in bits per second.
Ideally to get the most accurate results BrowserHawk would use a larger size of test data, such as 50KB or even 100KB. However, in doing so, this would cause significant delays when testing the connection speed of dial-up users.
After extensive in-house and real-world testing, 25KB of data was determined to offer the best balance between the time it takes to execute the test for dial-up users and the accuracy of testing results.
The SpeedCheckAdjustment property allows you to override BrowserHawk’s default testing data size of 50KB to use a multiple of 25KB of data. For example, if you want BrowserHawk to use 50KB of data for the test, you would specify a setting of 2 for this property (25KB x 2 = 50KB). If you want to use 250KB, set this property to 10.
As a special value, you can set this property to 0. Doing so instructs BrowserHawk to test using half the test data size (approximately 12KB). Setting this property to 0 is only recommended if you are interested in detecting dial-up Vs. broadband connections, and are not interested in the accuracy in the bits per second rating (using only 12KB of data is insufficient to provide accurate speed ratings beyond slow Vs. fast).
Note: Use of this property is supported only in the Enterprise Edition of BrowserHawk.
Note: This property cannot be used alone to detect connection speed. If you wish to change this value from its default of 1, you must set it to the desired value prior to calling GetExtendedBrowser, and specifying "ConnectionSpeed" using AddProperties.
Tip: Do not use a value greater than 1 for this property if you are concerned about testing time for dial-up users.
Tip: If you are only interested in detecting dial-up Vs. broadband connections, and are not concerned about the accuracy of the bits per second reading, you can use a value of 0 for this property. When doing so, you should treat a return value from the ConnectionSpeed property of less than 60,000 as dial-up, and greater than 60,000 or a value equal to zero as broadband. Note that a value in the ConnectionSpeed property of zero indicates the test executed to quickly to accurately time, but this is also an indication that a broadband connection is being used.
C# Example:
<%
ExtendedOptions options = new ExtendedOptions();
options.AddProperties("ConnectionSpeed");
options.SpeedCheckAdjustment = 5; // use 5x the normal amount of test data
options.PageMessage = "Please wait while your connection speed is checked…";
ExtendedBrowserObj extBrow = BrowserObj.GetExtendedBrowser(options);
%>
<html>
Connection speed is: <% Response.Write(extBrow.ConnectionSpeed); %> bits/second
</html>
See Also: