Hi

I'm new to this subject, so let's say I want to target mainly American surfers, and I have server A in the u.s., is it always true that the lowest ping server is the fastest server?
So if A pinging B is 30 milsecs and A pinging C is 40 milisecs so B is faster?
Are ther more parametrs that I'm not aware of?

Yes, thats corect..

Chears

No, that's not correct. Ping in it's most basic form is a measure of how fast the _pipe_ to the server is. I am using this termanology loosely. I can ping a server at 20ms, but if it is only on a 512kbs connection, and im sitting here on 3mbit, i can get a much faster transfer on a 30ms servre with a 10mbit line.

Once a connection is established, ping is not really going to matter.

The best way to do this, honestly is to have a 40-50 meg file on the server itself that can be reached through www.

Why so large? Download speeds tend to vary. Mine start out between 3-4m/s when I know for a fact I am capped @ 3. After a few seconds, they go down to a normal 2.5-3 (providing of course that the actual node is free enough to allow that;)). Providing a mere 10m file isn't actually providing anything, because those can generally be downloaded quickly. Providing a 40-50m file is a lot more stressful on the network itself, and it'll show a somewhat reasonably reliable result.

Pings are disabled on most servers through ICMP because of quite a few security flaws, so you may (or may not), and are really bad judges of network speed in general. You want something that is going to establish a connection and keep that connection going for 10+ minutes for a TRUE network test.

So I should ask the companies for a test file before signig up with them?

Always, although, be careful, it's highly possible to sneak in files on their own network (private) and then throw you on an ip that is completely oppsite and congested.