Tips & Tricks

How To Detect Your Dial-up Speed on AOL

When you are logging on to AOL, it gives you numbered steps throughout the connection process. In the third step, AOL will show at what speed you have connected to the Internet. Sometimes though it flashes rather quickly and you miss seeing what the connection speed is.

It's good to know your connection speed so that in case your connection is slower than you want it to be (for example: 14,000 bps), you can sign off of AOL and then reconnect trying to get a higher connection speed. The higher the connection speed, the faster your computer will open web pages, load graphics and sounds, etc.

The process of finding out your connection speed after you have signed on is a simple two step process.

First, click the help tab at the top of the window and select About America Online.

Second, when the About AOL screen pops up, press Ctrl+Y. This button command brings up the Connection Status Information screen. Towards the bottom of this screen, you will see, "Current Connection Speed (bps): xxxxx." The x's will be your speed. In this example, my current connection speed is 44,000 bps.

Now that wasn't so bad, was it?

--Sam Baker

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