getting the most from my internet

Bucketman

So I have DSL internet right now and for some reason I just feel like I'm not getting the most out of it. Most downloads top off at around 175 Kb/sec and even when I was at school and had a T3 line I noticed them topping out at around the same. I tested this theory recently at my friends house where he has Cable and gets like 800 kb - 1 mb a second, and I still stopped at around 175 Kb/sec.

I feel like this MIGHT be a router problem...but is more then likely somthing up with my PC. So I was wondering if there was something I didn't know about that could be slowing my connection speed. Thanks.

Jasconius

It also depends on who you are downloading from and when. Just like you have limited download speeds, servers have limited upload speeds, and you can only take it as fast as they give it.

If you often download from heavily trafficed sites or sites with mediocre hosting, then you really won't know if it's your connection or theirs.

Bandwidth tests are a good measure in general.

175kb/s sounds fairly slow though.

Bucketman

According to http://www.speedtest.net/ I should be at


So yeah that seems off to me...

Lewisham

Speedtest is a small specialised measure, it should not be used as anything but an indication.

I'm on an academic network that's connected to Internet2, and I often don't see downloads above 180kbps. The bottleneck is at their end, not yours.

EDIT: Also note that Speedtest does nothing special, it just sends you a file and sees how long it takes. If Speedtest reports that value, then it can't be your router.

Bucketman

Lewisham wrote: »

Speedtest is a small specialised measure, it should not be used as anything but an indication.

I'm on an academic network that's connected to Internet2, and I often don't see downloads above 180kbps. The bottleneck is at their end, not yours.

EDIT: Also note that Speedtest does nothing special, it just sends you a file and sees how long it takes. If Speedtest reports that value, then it can't be your router.

Thats weird the exact file I'm downloading is the Hellgate London beta files, and some people where saying its going at like 600 Kb/sec or faster for them so I assumed that after all the testing and stuff I've done over the last week it HAD to be somthing on my end. Well thanks for the help anyway.

Lewisham

There are any number of variables that can affect that sort of thing.

If Speedtest is reporting a decent connection, then that's what you have.

aperlscript

Bucketman wrote: »

According to http://www.speedtest.net/ I should be at


So yeah that seems off to me...

One thing: speedtest is being accurate, 175 kB/s equals 1400 kb/s (kiloBYTES vs. kiloBITS).

edit: unless you really are getting 175 kb/s (like, 21kB/s) in which case your connection is way slow.

Bucketman

aperlscript wrote: »

Bucketman wrote: »

According to http://www.speedtest.net/ I should be at


So yeah that seems off to me...

One thing: speedtest is being accurate, 175 kB/s equals 1400 kb/s (kiloBYTES vs. kiloBITS).

edit: unless you really are getting 175 kb/s (like, 21kB/s) in which case your connection is way slow.

Nope is KB with capital letters. so does that mean my internet sucks balls?

Smasher

If you still got those speeds at school and your friend's house then it's not your router (unless you connected through it there too for some reason).