You can find the fastest and closest web sites, by checking the Internet network path between your computer and each site, and compare the speed of one to another:
- Paths. If you can’t reach a web site, you can use the ping utility to ping the site’s domain name. If the site returns a response, then the site and network are fine, but the web server is down. If the ping fails or times out, and you can still ping other sites like yahoo.com, then the web site’s entire network is likely down.
You can trace the path your communications with a web site are routed through over the Internet with the traceroute utility, showing the length of the path, and the specific routers at which each packet stops along the way.
- Speed. If you have a choice of a number of mirror web sites, or if you have a choice of which site to download a large file from, or if you are just curious, then you can use the ping utility to determine which site has the fastest response time. Just ping each web site, and then use the one with the minimum response time.