Italian developer IPRapps released the new version of Net.isfaction on Wednesday, a free iOS mobile app that can assess the speed and performance of wireless and cellular networks.

Downloading music, videos and mobile applications can be a painstaking and costly process if network speeds are running slow. This is where Net.isfaction comes in.

Version 2.3 of the app provides connection speed measurements of Wi-Fi, 3G, EDGE and other cellular networks in real-time, giving users the ability to identify the most opportune moment to access mobile broadband services.

In addition, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch owners can use the app to find out whether the maximum broadband speeds promised by their service provider are accurate.

The new version of Net.isfaction provides both a standard and an enhanced test. The standard model covers a number of test cases, including HTTP-based web browsing, email access, VoIP usage and file transfer speeds, both in upload and download directions.

Users who require more specific information – such as the size of the FTP file – can set low-level configuration parameters with the enhanced test. The more advanced set also enables performance testing when more than one user is accessing the cellular network from the same base station.

The latest version of the app brings push notifications, more user-friendly icons and a few different bug fixes. Net.isfaction 2.3 also provides users with a simple and highly-intuitive graphic interface that makes measuring networks as easy as checking the speedometer of a car. iOS users can access past network tests using the app's history bar, which provides graphs and other trending data.

The update comes just after Net.isfaction broke into the top 25 apps for the iPhone (News - Alert) for the first time. The app is currently available as a free download from the App Store. Users will need to be running IOS 4.01 or later.

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Beecher Tuttle is a TMCnet contributor. He has extensive experience writing and editing for print publications and online news websites. He has specialized in a variety of industries, including health care technology, politics and education. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell