How to compare page load speeds of two different web servers

Question

I've recently set up a VPS with a view to transferring all of my current websites from my current shared hosting platform to this VPS. But I want to make sure that this VPS would be an improvement to page load speed for the websites compared to the shared platform I'm on at the moment.

I was wondering if there was a way to test the speed of both servers and compare them?

Answer 1

You can test load times in the browser with YSlow from Yahoo. It also offers functionality to suggest ways you can improve page performance. Its more about the web/front end stuff (HTML, Javascript, CSS) than serverside, but it will certainly help you compare load times.