Download speed

[Tolomeo]

Alirght, I am looking into finding and new internet service provider and decided I should take the speedtest(speedtest.net) and it came up with some remarkable results that I feel there is an error. It clearly says ~5.5 Mb/s for download speed, but my download speed never exceeds .6 Mb/s (I know it's fucking slow), it never has. I really don't understand this at all, and hopefully someone can clear it up for me somehow.

[Janke 1st MRB]

I think you guys are misinterpreting what your ISPs are telling you, they sell internet service in megaBITS per second, and almost all applications show download rates in megaBYTES per second, Mbps vs MBps, the capitalization of the B makes a difference, lower base b is bit, uppercase B is byte

The difference in the two is one megaBIT is 125 kiloBYTES, or 0.125 megaBYTES. Therefore, you get exactly what you pay for, 5 megabits, which is around 600 kilobytes.

Here's my result, this translates to about 0.525 MB/s.

[Magic 1st MRB]

No no this is normal. Your max download speed is suppose to be only 12% of your line's max. Like for example i have a 16 MB/s connection and I've never gotten past 2MB/s download speed. ( steam has a REALLY good connection so thats where i test my dl speed) . So i might not know the technical stuff but janke is right. remember 12.5% of the actual advertised value

[Janke 1st MRB]

No no this is normal. Your max download speed is suppose to be only 12% of your line's max. Like for example i have a 16 MB/s connection and I've never gotten past 2MB/s download speed. ( steam has a REALLY good connection so thats where i test my dl speed) . So i might not know the technical stuff but janke is right. remember 12.5% of the actual advertised value

As I just mentioned, it's listing your DL speed on speedtest with a little b, meaning megaBIT, which is 0.125 MB, or megaBYTEs, which is 12.5% of a megaBIT. They don't lie, you get exactly what speedtest tells you you do, because it's a different measurement than what you think. You pay for a 16Mbps connection, a 16 megaBIT per second connection, which means the fastest in megaBYTES per second you'll be able to download is 2MBps. The line's max is what it is, depending on age/distance/whatever it becomes slower, but it's not a percentage of your line's max that you get, it's a different unit of measurement you're reading. For instance, I get 4.5Mbps, on average, but I pay for 7. Because the lines in my area are 70 years old and Bell is only now beginning to replace them, I can't get 7, the old line doesn't support it (or Bell is being a jackass). Because they're replacing the lines though, and re-working the system, I'm supposed to be getting faster speeds within the next week.

Remember, you're reading a different unit of measurement, MegaBIT (Mb) versus MegaBYTE (MB).

[B. Farr]

Cool I wanna play

[Parker 1st MRB]

Do I win?

[B. Farr]

Do I win?

LOL good try, but whenever you edit a pic, try making sure that it is more accurate than that...........ROFLMAO

[Frantz]

DO I WIN LMFAO

This is on a laptop (Dell Studio)

Edited July 3, 2011 by Frantz 1st MRB

[Yamagata 1st MRB]

See what boredom in networking class does. Hey, at least it's semi-related.

[R. Baker 1st MRB]

I lose =(

[Maines]

Any hints on how to improve?

[Yamagata 1st MRB]

Not too much you can do aside from upgrading your plan with your current provider or getting a new provider altogether. You can limit the number of downloads you have running at one time on your network, but that's kind of obvious.