DSL performance evaluation

[SteveDallas]

So, I finally decided to take the plunge and hook up DSL. (I've been on the Internet since 1986 and had high-speed access at school or work almost that whole time. One would have thought that broadband at home would be a no-brainer for me. The very fact that it's taken me this long to try it says a lot about how badly the various people reponsible have handled broadband.)

My only concern is, given the ancient telephone wiring in my neighborhood, what kind of performance will I get? I decided to give it a try and evaluate things carefully during the 30 day money-back period to see if I thought the situation was acceptable, since there seems to be no way to find out without actually hooking everything up.

So, my questions for you are: first, if you have DSL, what kind of download speeds do you typically see? second, what SHOULD I expect? are there particular metrics I can use to measure whether I'm getting good performance? Any software utilities to measure it?