I've recently built a Flash 6 site: Superconductor

All of the content is defined in XML documents, and loaded dynamically when required. This includes JPEGS, MP3 soundtrack and TEXT. This system dramatically cuts down site pre-load time.

The problem is that the MP3 soundtracks, despite being relatively low-bandwidth, take up pretty much all of a 56k modem connection. This means that images (especially the photo gallery thumbnails) don't load before the timeout functions trip in...

The site uses Flash 6 local variable storage, so if you turn the music off, and re-load the page, it remembers. This solves the problem.

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What I want to build is some kind of auto connection speed detection that dynamically disables music if the connection is slow. The most obvious way is to time how long the site takes to load, but if it's the second or third visit it will be buffered so this won't be valid, wheras the music is randomly selected so can change every time.

Does anyone know a good way to get a reliable estimate of network connection bandwidth ?

Thanks,
A.