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connection test --> then redirection

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2002 9:13 am
by webnic
hi there,

do you know a means, or script that is able to test the connection/bandwith of the user?

problem: my company has a good working, nice looking flash-site (http://www.motan.com). so far so good. :D
we are now facing problems with users in the former USSR or latin america, who are not able to properly navigate our site because of their slow connection, e.g. 28k Modems or lower. :(

:idea: we will set up a clone-page in pure html. testing the connection of the surfer, he either gets the flash-site, or in case he has a slow connection, he`ll be redirected to the html-version automatically.

is that possible?

Thanks for your help!
have a nice day

webnic :D

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2002 10:35 am
by llimllib
Interesting problem. You can solve it, but you probably don't want to; the usual method is to let the user choose or go with the lowest common denominator. However, if you do want to do it, here's what comes to mind:
On the index page:
timestamp;
load a whole bunch of HTML that displays nothing (it will have to be a fairly significant amount of HTML to be moderately accurate - maybe a large image with width and height set to -1?);
timestamp;
call a function to decide what page to direct them to based on the difference in timestamps
I'd test the script in a bunch of browsers, too, to make sure that they load things sequentially, as they're not required to (AFAIK). Keep in mind, this will by definition slow everyone down. Good Luck, hopefully you'll let everyone know what you end up doing.

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2002 6:42 pm
by fatalcure
well that wont really work since it will cache the image after the first time anyway, so after that the image will appear faster that the time it took to download it the first time.

I dont have a solution for your problem, but im sure there's a way, keep huntin :)

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2002 9:55 pm
by llimllib
The image won't cache if you give it a random name every time. Don't think of reasons why things won't work, fatal, think of ways that they could. If you want to see a site that does this already, go to http://www.speedtest.com.

Posted: Fri Aug 09, 2002 6:57 am
by webnic
thanks anyway, i´ll stick to the problem.
any other opinion or solutions?

i´ll keep you updated, once i find the solution!



have a nice weekend

webnic

Posted: Fri Aug 09, 2002 5:11 pm
by Polar
Hi !


It is easy to do using for example Flash. I used Flash4 already 3 years ago for it :) Try to do search on Flashkit.com in movies section and i am sure that you will find several connection speed testers :)