Is there a way of going in an checking my DSL connection on the computer to see if I'm getting my maximum speeds. I have been trying to download music files on both Kazaa and Winmx and my speeds have been horrible , alot worse than it used to be

Hey, Cal. One good way to test your system is to use DSL Reports (http://www.dslreports.com/tools). You can run all kinds of scans from there, including the "Speed Tests" and the "Tweak Tests" to see if your system is configured properly. Should give you the info you are looking for.

thanks Shakey, I just registered... something up, I've gone from download speeds of music files from 40-120 to 20-3 . So I better see whats going on

I never believe nor trust those web sites that claim to measure your speed connection.

Why? Because there are many other people checking those out at the same time and you never get the same answer twice.

If their connection is a T3 (45 mbits/sec), but they are really loaded down, you might see your connection as getting a max of 40K/sec, yet if you go to another site that is on a faster connection, such as an OC3 and isn't nearly as loaded, you might get a result of 80K/sec, when you were getting that all the time, but the first site was really loaded down.

Simply put, online reports are not accurate. Don't trust them.

The idiots at AT&T broadband always sent me to those sites to find out how fast my connection was and I never got an accurate report.

Use this instead:
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/nsl.htm

Install that little utility. Rather than asking another web site that is already loaded down with other requests, this utility gets it right from the source: your network card.

I use it all the time and it works great!

That will show you live transfer speeds. You don't need to refresh a page or anything. It pops up a window that shows you exactly how many bits or bytes are going in and coming out of your network card, whether its on the internet or connecting you to a LAN.

(No offense meant to Shakey by dogging DSL reports)

No offense taken. I have been using Netstat Live for quite some time. Great utility. However... I have found DSLReports to be fairly accurate (based on what I should be getting and what they report). To each their own though.