There are so many websites which features tools exclusively for testing your Internet download speeds. One of the most popular of these sites is Fast.com which is run by Netflix. Anyone can visit these sites and start checking the download as well as upload speeds for their Internet connections.
However if you are looking for a software to be used on a Windows PC for checking the Internet download speeds, then you can try DownTester. It is a portable tool designed by the famous developer Nir Sofer. What makes this tool different from other speed testing tools is that it does not have a built-in or hard-coded list of servers. The user has to provide their own URL links for the purpose of download test. The program accepts URLs of all kinds including FTP links (the ones that begin with ftp://).
After launching DownTester, the first thing we have to do is add one or more URLs for testing. We can add these URLs in many different ways. We can manually enter one URL at a time by using the hotkey Ctrl+U. We can select a text file which contains many URLs – one URL per line by using hotkey F9. We can also use a network/local file for testing local drive/network drive speed.
Some of the ISP provide such download links for testing the download speeds. For example, Vodafone UK offers a list of download files which are meant for this purpose. You should check with your own ISP for such links for much more accurate results.
After adding the URLs, we can click on the “Start downloads test” button in the toolbar to begin the download test. Alternatively, we can also press F2 key on the keyboard. It will display the download progress for your Internet connection and the selected URL. The final results will also be displayed in the same window.
DownTester can use URLs of all kinds including FTP links. We can export the results to HTML or plain text files too.
You can download DownTester from https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/download_speed_tester.html.