There are two ways you can assess the speed of proxies. First of all, the Response Time column on the Proxy Check tab may give some idea about the relative speed of different proxies: the smaller the numbers, the faster the proxy. You can click the column header to sort the whole list by this parameter. However, this only tests the path between your computer and the proxy, it does not involve the website you are visiting.
There is another way to test the speed: Check URL button (Proxy Check tab). In the field next to it you must enter the complete URL of the website or file for which you want to test speed. Then click the Check URL button. The file will be downloaded through the proxy(s) you selected before. All statistics will be shown in columns “URL Response Time”(the smaller the better), “Bytes Received” and “Speed”(shows the actual speed of the connection through the particular proxy in bytes/sec, the higher the better). This will show you the speed of proxies for a particular URL. You will need to scroll the table to the right to see those columns. Note, however, that if the file (whose URL you enter in the box) is too big, it might take a long time before the test completes, so in this case press the Stop&Save; button after a minute or two – you will already have some reliable figures.
Here’s what one of our customers has reported: I have found that the best performance of Anonymity 4 Proxy comes not from sorting on Response Time but on the very last column “Speed.” Proxies may have small differences in response time but the Speed column may show one or two proxies that are literally orders of magnitude faster than the rest. A slight delay in response time is more than compensated for in a really fast connection once the proxy does respond. So after I determine which proxies work, I check the URL and make the speediest one my default.