With this app you could be saying "My BlackBerry Storm is faster than your iPhone," or "My iPhone is faster than your BlackBerry Storm." Cisco is offering free apps for BlackBerry Storm and iPhone users that show your data speeds and show the places where the data speeds are speediest, called "GIST."
The free apps from Cisco will help you quickly understand the "gist" of what your
network speed can deliver at any given time.
Users submit their
test location enabling the global user community to learn the places
with the fastest speeds and compare cellular and wif-fi speeds with
iPhone and Blackberry Storm users around the world.
An added bonus is that you will be give a user rating for your dat speeds and also see what others have been given. Here are your grades:
- Web 2.0 Grade: surf the web and collaborate, you're on a solid wave (150 - 449 kbps)
- Music Grade: download/listen to your favorite tunes, you've got the bandwidth (450 - 749 kbps)
- Video Grade: get your popcorn--it's showtime, you're in the fast lane (750+ kbps)
To download the apps for your iPhone or BlackBerry Storm go to http://www.ciscopulse.com/ and on your marks, start you download, let the race begin!
The
test is performed by downloading a known quantity of data from a single
web server. The size of the data is different for the different types
of network connections, so that the test will take roughly the same
amount of time from the user's perspective.
For a cellular network
test, 256KB are downloaded. For wireless, 512 KB are downloaded. A
single download is performed, timed in milliseconds, and results are
reported in terms of 1000 bits per second (kbps). Test results might be
impacted by network routing, traffic, congestion and the responsiveness
of our server. Results might also vary by the user's geographical
location.