The FCC just released a set of tools designed to test a user connection to the Internet,both for PC platforms (works on IE and Firefox) and applets for Iphone and other smart phones. Just access www.broadband.gov and you will be prompted to review the national plan to deploy broadband and invited to test your own connection to the internet. The site uses technology developed by OOKLA.
The FCC’s tool lets you measure download and upload speeds, as well as latency and jitter (the last two are important for video and voice applications). Nobody talks about latency and jitter and that is a shame. For high quality video conferencing, less than 20ms of jitter is best. Latency less than 30 ms is excellent. 
If you want to test your Internet connection, you must choose what type of consumer are you, home or commercial, including street address and zip code.
The test include upload and download speeds and latency and jitter to the service provider. Results are comparable to speedtest.net, a site that also utilizes OOKLA technology.
The FCC site also provides an Iphone application to measure network performance on a WI-FI network using a smart phone.
If your Iphone is connected to a WI-FI network, your results will reflect the speed of your broadband connection. If you disable Wi-Fi and then perform the test, the results will reflect the performance on the 3G network provided by At&T.
I believe this to be a great step to forcing greater transparency in the Internet access space and eventually will force Service providers to increase speed and lower costs.
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