How can I measure the upload speed of a file sent to a PHP script to handle on an Apache server?

Hello,  I've set up an HTML file upload form to upload large files (about 150 megabytes).  Changed the php.ini settings to accept large file upoads to:
memory_limit=50M
post_max_size=700M
file_uploads=On
upload_max_filesize=700M

But the uploads for 150 megabyte files are quite slow.  Takes over 30 minutes.  And takes about 30-35 to FTP it using Dreamweaver.  To me that is too long, I don't believe it takes that long to upload a file that like in Dreamweaver.
1.  What can I do to measure the server speed of the upload like bytes per second?  And can I measure my own connection speed to (if that is important)?
2.  What can I do to improve my upload times?  Do I need to get a new shared hosting account?  Can I boost my bandwidth some other way?  Is there a server measurement when I'm looking for a new host that can let me know how fast uploads will be?
Thanks!!