Download Speeds

[johnb]

Hi All,

i'm very new to all this so was wondering what download speed you guys were averaging out at?  I will have a 4meg ADSL line tomorrow and my 1 meg is currently downloading at 110kB/s and rising.  IS this any good or is there anything you would recommend I look at to better this?

Cheers

[Quantum]

Speeds are advertised in megabits per second, but download speeds are calculated in megabytes per second.

There are 8 megabits in 1 megabyte.

So 110kB/s is 110 kilobytes per second is 880 kilobits per second, so that's about 88% of your current maximum theoretical download rate, so that's very good.

[Synbios]

There are precisely 8 bits in 1 byte. However since the conversion from bits to kilobit and megabit are factors of 1000, and the conversion from byte to kilobyte and megabyte are factors of 1024, you simply can't say that there are 8 megabits in a megabyte. It's going to be slightly off if you want to be technical.

It's tough to go directly from megabytes to megabits, there are roughly 8.388608 megabits in a megabyte. It's therefore easier to convert whatever you have to bits or bytes, then back to what you want them in.

110 KB/sec is 901.1kbps, so that's even closer to 1Mbps then we thought...

I use the bandwidth calculator on BBR to do my calculations:
http://www.dslreports.com/calculator?sz=&time=&speed=110+KBps&c3=Calc

Back to the point if you get a 4Mbps line, you should be expecting speeds around 488.3 KB/sec, assuming there are ample peers and seeds to download from.

[Quantum]

Well no, technically

1000 bits = 1 kilobit
1000 bytes = 1 kilobyte

1024 bits = 1 kibibit
1024 bytes = 1 kibibyte


But that's not important, how the ISPs measure it is important. In the U.K when they say 8 mbps connection they mean 8*1024*1024 bits per second, they may scam you even more in the U.S than they do in the U.K though.

[Synbios]

I forgot that you guys use kibibit. In the U.S. we only use kilobyte and kilobit.

For us:
If someone says kB or KB then that's kilobyte. kb or Kb is kilobit.

I have a 8Mbps connection here and it's 976.6 kilobytes a second, which is exactly 8,000,000 bits per second., rather than the slightly faster 8x2^20 which is what it would be in europe.

Even if you guys use kibibit, 1024 bytes should still be a kilobyte though. All the programs I use (uTorrent, etc) report in kilobytes per second, so that's what I use for measurements.

[Synbios]

I take back what I said in the last part. I understand why you guys use 1024 bytes in a kilobyte now, since the REAL SI prefix kilo is for 1000. (kibi is for 1024)

wow we have a messed up system in the US..

at least we don't refer to weight as stones though

[Quantum]

I take back what I said in the last part. I understand why you guys use 1024 bytes in a kilobyte now, since the REAL SI prefix kilo is for 1000. (kibi is for 1024)

wow we have a messed up system in the US..

at least we don't refer to weight as stones though

Haha, technically speaking we've moved to metric for everything other than measurement of distance (all our road signs and speedometres are still in miles). But yeah, just through habit most people refer to weight of a person in stones. But measurement of most weight is now metric like we can go and get 2 kgs of Potatoes, with notable exceptions of old street markets and milk which is still mainly measured in pints , although often the bottles say 0.568 litres lol.

It's ofcourse worth mentioning that at this point, our pints are bigger than yours, 1 of our pints is about 1.2 of your pints 

And yeah, I was about to make a post on SI units and stuff and how it's very important in maths and science to have no ambiguity, so we don't end up in a mess  . But the forum pointed out a new post had been made.

[TheHalf™]

It's just understanding kB - kb and recognizing the upper\lower case b and in some instances where the b is always lower case the upper and lower case k...Kb\KB. Anyhoo there's a simple conversion calculator you can use to identify what you may be getting for what your paying for:

Click there---> http://www.testmy.net/tools/convert.php

And here would be my Kb\KB or kb\KB: 15Mbps\2Mbps (15,000,000\2,000,000) = 1831.05MB\244.14MB

TheHalf™

[Quantum]

It's just understanding kB - kb and recognizing the upper\lower case b and in some instances where the b is always lower case the upper and lower case k...Kb\KB. Anyhoo there's a simple conversion calculator you can use to identify what you may be getting for what your paying for:

Click there---> http://www.testmy.net/tools/convert.php

And here would be my Kb\KB or kb\KB: 15Mbps\2Mbps (15,000,000\2,000,000) = 1831.05MB\244.14MB

TheHalf™

Somehow I don't think 15Mbps = 1831.05 MBps 

[TheHalf™]

Perhaps I made a typo (hope not):

15000000 Kbps

15000000 Kbps is 1831054.69 kB/s
Or 15000 Mbps  ::: 1831.05 MB/sec

TheHalf™

[Quantum]

Perhaps I made a typo (hope not):

15000000 Kbps

15000000 Kbps is 1831054.69 kB/s
Or 15000 Mbps  ::: 1831.05 MB/sec

TheHalf™

Well that sort of makes sense using your silly American system, but nobody other than people who access to the backbone structure of the internet has speeds that fast.

[TheHalf™]

I may disagree with you Quantum, I 'm with roadrunner (who thru Time Warner) acquired Adelphia that used to be my ISP.

Adelphia's backbone (US): http://www.adelphiacom.net/

And my current speedtest results via testmy.net:

:::.. Download Stats ..:::
Download Connection is:: 18217 Kbps about 18.2 Mbps (tested with 12160 kB)
Download Speed is:: 2224 kB/s
Tested From:: http://testmy.net/ (Main)
Test Time:: 2007/11/28 - 7:50pm
Bottom Line:: 318X faster than 56K 1MB Download in 0.46 sec
Tested from a 12160 kB file and took 5.468 seconds to complete
Download Diagnosis:: Awesome! 20% + : 253.32 % faster than the average for host (rr.com)
D-Validation Link:: http://testmy.net/stats/id-GCF6OIWRS
User Agent:: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; Media Center PC 3.0; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) [!]

TheHalf™

[Synbios]

You'd be surprised Quantum, at the internet speed diversity available here in the US. A lot of people still have 56k, some have 768Kbps/128Kbps or 1.5M/128k DSL. The average joe usually has 3Mbps/384Kbps cable or so.

But if you're lucky enough to live in an area where FTTH (fibre to the home) exists or extremely fast cable, then it's not odd to find people here with 20/20Mbps symmetrical speeds at a residence for $65 US a month or so (average is about 40-50 for "normal cable").

[Quantum]

uhhh what?

I said you couldn't get speeds like that unless you were part of the backbone, TheHalf I quoted you on speeds 100x faster than what you have.

And I don't mean connected to some ISP which runs the backbone (as almost everyone in this country is) I mean quite literally sitting on a server which is connected to backbone wiring.

20/20 is a long way off 1831/244

[Synbios]

I thought you were aweing at the 15Mbps, yeah TheHalf definitely made some calculation errors.

He said "15000 Mbps  ::: 1831.05 MB/sec" which I think he meant he has 15000Kbps or 15Mbps, which would be about 1.8 MB/sec.

What's the average connection in England, and what do you have?