Question downloading speeds

[Grover]

Ive been angry with my ISP because i cant reach the 10 MB speed we were promised when we signed up (we only get 0.3). I dont want to rant, but it did raise a question:

What is meant when they say my speed is 0.3 MB? How are the units of this representative of speed? Because MB is a quantity, not a rate.

Thanks

 

[jangofett287]

they probably mean MB/s.

 

[Linguofreak]

Ive been angry with my ISP because i cant reach the 10 MB speed we were promised when we signed up (we only get 0.3). I dont want to rant, but it did raise a question:

Are you sure it's 10 MB/s and not 10 Mb/s? ISPs tend to market connection speeds in megabits / s (Mb/s), not megabytes / s (MB/s). Meanwhile, computers often report connection speeds in MB/s. (Because people in the telecommunications industry tend to be more concerned with how many ones and zeros they can pump through a wire per second, whatever they mean, while computers are concerned with what the ones and zeros actually mean, and meanings tend to be assigned to groups of ones and zeros).

Are you getting the 0.3 figure from your computer or from their router? If it's your computer, it's probably MB/s, if its their router it's probably Mb/s. And there's a factor of eight difference between the two. (0.3 MB/s is 2.4 Mb/s).

Also, if you read through the advertisements for your service, you'll probably see that they advertise it as:

up to 10 Mb/s!!!!

which means that under the best possible conditions, you'll get 10 Mb/s, but they don't guarantee anything. And, indeed, depending on the exact technology they're using for the connection, they may well have you on a shared line with other people, which will mean that you'll get 10 Mb/s at 2:30 in the morning, but at 8:00 on a Friday evening, you're probably sharing that 10 Mb/s with other people.

 

[Grover]

I cant remember well, and i cant get to my computer, but:
It was an online speed checker, and it said 0.3 MB speed.

 

[Stevodoran]

I found this interesting: http://www.speedtest.net/

 

[Coolhand]

I cant remember well, and i cant get to my computer, but:
It was an online speed checker, and it said 0.3 MB speed.

is that up or down? It should give you 2 results... download is always higher than up.

If so, sounds like a pretty average upload speed for the UK, i get about .5 mb/s

Who are you with?

0.3mb/s download would be pretty awful though, no way you could for example stream video in real time, even minimum quality youtube. you should really be getting about 2mb/s if you're paying for 10, seems to be how it works.

I had a really awful provider about 2 years ago who gave me less than .3 for download due to excessive throttling at all times, a complete rip off... In fact, no exaggeration, it was most often slower than dialup.

After this i went with O2, who were slow but kicked me off their poor service because i broke their download limits (while no one would tell me exactly what the limits were - a bit like handing out speeding tickets on a road with no speed limit signs and not even the cop will tell you by how much you exceeded the limit.)

I'm currently with another provider who are slightly quicker, but i have the phone with them also and it costs quite a lot per month.

If looking for a new provider i won't make any recommendations other than avoid utilitywarehouse, tiscali and O2, who have all given me a terrible service in the past. BT are also rubbish with pathetic download limitations.

 

[Scruce]

If so, sounds like a pretty average upload speed for the UK, i get about .5 mb/s

Who are you with?

Only .5 MB/S? I live far away from the nearest exchange and I am getting 6 MB/S upload speed. British Telecom (BT) Infinity.

 

[Stevodoran]

Only .5 MB/S? I live far away from the nearest exchange and I am getting 6 MB/S upload speed. British Telecom (BT) Infinity.

Whoah........... Upload speed? Thats Pretty fast.

 

[jedidia]

Your download speed also depends on the bandwith of the server you're downloading from. If there's a lot of people downloading from the same server, it simply can't send you your packets as fast as you might be able to receive them.

Servers also have a bandwith limitation per download, i.e. they will practically never send at your maximum speed, in order to prevent people with very fast download speeds from using up their whole bandwith all alone, if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Grover]

I get 0.3 for both upload AND download, its incredibly slow (no youtube)

The problem is the BT line that runs to the house, since i live on whats basically a new village (some construction crews just turned up and built a new village on top of the old WWII royal ordinance factory)

Maybe itll get better, else ill have to put up with top download speeds of 30kb/s