Download Speeds

[willythecat]

Out of interest, can someone just explain the principles of download speeds. Living in the sticks, I've now just got myself adsl which the provider says download speeds of up to 28mb. Now l know this is not possible, but these statements appear to be the norm from most lSP packages.
At the moment, l'm downloading a file where the speed is averaging around the 82kb/sec mark. I've had better speeds from my old dial up modem (125kb/sec).
How are these download speeds governed and can they be increased?
Thanks

[2x3i5x]

one factor regarding download speed is the quality of the hosting site hosting the file which you download and when you are downloading. If you download a peak times, your download speed may be slow.

"I've had better speeds from my old dial up modem (125kb/sec) -- is this regarding same file you are now downloading at 82kb/sec?

[willythecat]

Thanks 2x, interesting that about the ISP provider.
And no, it wasn't the same file, but the same download site. In retrospect that was a pretty dumb statement of mine (course the speeds would be different - doh!)
I assume distance from the exchange and quality of the line has a say in the matter as well?
Also out of interest, are there any tweaks that can be made to up the transfer rate?

[hot dog]

you can test your download speed here:

http://www.speedtest.net/

[willythecat]

Thanks BH,
Wow that's nifty, with some really interesting results.
Thanks for that.
Regards

[hot dog]

BTW, with respect to your 28 mb...    It's refers to 28 mbps (mega bits per second)

To break that down for you..  1 mbps is equal to 1,000,000 bits per second

You've got 28 mbps, so you've got 28,000,000 bits per second

If we converted that 28,000,000 to kbps (kilo bits per second), you simply divide by 1000, giving you wopping 28,000 kbps..........That's approx. 14 times faster than my services' theoretical download speed 

Note: KB is kilobytes and kb is kilobits...........like wise... MB is megabytes and mb is megabits.............Also, 8 bits = 1 byte


Now lets take that 28,000 kbps and convert it to kilo bytes per second.
To make it simple start with out any conversions attached to it...You have 28,000,000 bits per second..right?   Divide that by 8 to give you the same speed of 3,500,000 bytes per second.   Divide that by 1,000 and you get 3,500 KBps (Kilo Bytes per second) 

Lets take your speed of 28,000 kbps and turn it into Mega bytes per second..  Take the original speed (28,000,000 bits per second) and divide it by 8 giving you 3,500,000 bytes per second, then dived that by 1,000 to get 3,500 Kilo Bytes per second (KBps), then dived it again by 1,000 and get 3.5 Mega Bytes per second.. (MBps)

I'm curious, is your tested download speed from the website anything close to this?

[BC_Programmer]

Now lets take that 28,000 kbps and convert it to kilo bytes per second.
To make it simple start with out any conversions attached to it...You have 28,000,000 bits per second..right?   Divide that by 8 to give you the same speed of 3,500,000 bytes per second.

Divide that by 1,000 and you get 3,500 KBps (Kilo Bytes per second)  Smiley

Lets take your speed of 28,000 kbps and turn it into Mega bytes per second..  Take the original speed (28,000,000 bits per second) and divide it by 8 giving you 3,500,000 bytes per second, then dived that by 1,000 to get 3,500 Kilo Bytes per second (KBps), then dived it again by 1,000 and get 3.5 Mega Bytes per second.. (MBps)

I'm curious, is your tested download speed from the website anything close to this? Wink

a kilobyte is 1024 bytes.

you oversimplified

so, 3,500,000 bytes per second=3417.9 Kilobytes per second =3.33 Megabytes per second.


Yes... according to the ISO standard "kilobyte" now means 1000 bytes, and kibibyte is 1024... but it's ridiculous to even imply that terms used since the dawn of the PC era should be changed simply because people who aren't used to metric at all get confused.

[hot dog]

well, it's my understanding that a kilobyte when measuring speed is 1000 bytes..

If you were measuring storage it would be 1024..    But you probably know more about it than I do so I won't argue there 



Also with respect the quote that you quoted me on, I had to edit the last paragraph because of a typo and I left out the last sentence, converting to the final 3.5 MBps..

[hot dog]

now that I think about it some more.........it makes even more sense to use a kilobyte as 1024 bytes....after all, computers understand only binary..

[BC_Programmer]

kilobyte is always 1024, as far as I'm concerned.

like I said- it's the confusion with the metric system that catches people up. even though they are metric prefixes, they indicate powers of 2 rather then powers of 10- a kilobyte, for example, is 2^10 bytes, a megabyte is 2^10 kilobytes, etc etc.

your confusion about speed is probably because most speeds are indicated with Hz, as in Mhz and Ghz- with hertz we're back to standard metric.

and didn't even notice the typo there 

[hot dog]

Thanks BH,
Wow that's nifty, with some really interesting results.
Thanks for that.
Regards

no problem, just be sure to click on "thank blockHEAD for their post"                   

[willythecat]

Thank you both, that was really interesting.
Now understand a bit more about download speeds. It seems to vary at different times of the day (obviously) but l'm averaging about 2.10mbps download and that is a lot faster than what l had before.
Thanks again

[WillyW]

That's why I usually recommend   http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ 
as it reports in both    kbps        and        KB/sec        ,   and if the person with questions uses it, and copy and pastes both results -  then there is no confusion.   

Check it out.   Give it a try.   
I think the general rule of thumb is to choose the server that is the closest to you.    But   - what the heck, right? -     try a few of them.   


And I agree with you about time of day, etc.
If you want to really get a feel for what is "normal" for you,    when you do the test,   copy-n-paste the results to a text file, and keep.
Do the test a few more times.     Different days.    Different times of day.
Record the results of each.
You'll soon get a feel for what is "normal".

[BC_Programmer]

that is especially true with cable, since really your sharing a high-bandwidth connection with everybody in the neighborhood.
Of course if your like me and pay a bit extra you can get a larger chunk of the pie

[Saurabhdua]

& if someone wish to know the SCIENCE behind the results of "Connection speed" from "Speedtest.net"......Just check out the attachment!


A PURE COINCIDENCE 

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Quantos]

that is especially true with cable, since really your sharing a high-bandwidth connection with everybody in the neighborhood.
Of course if your like me and pay a bit extra you can get a larger chunk of the pie

I think I have the largest chunk of pie in the neighborhood.