Why are my download speeds so slow?

[jesse83189]

it took me around 25 minutes to download AIM... i thought i would investigate my problem. so i went to a website that told me my upload and download bandwith. my upload was a respectable 378 kb/s. while my download bandwith was only 17 kb/s.... whats up with that... so my question is how do i get the around 500 somethin my moms paying for?

 

[franklin97355]

Try the test more than once from more than one test site. See what you get then. If it's still slow call your ISP.

The answer is "42"

 

[cdogg]

DSL or Cable? Fairly modern PC or is it an old-timer?

Reboot and go here to try another test:

http://www.bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[MikeMoss]

Hi

I just ran this test on my computer 3 times and it said that my speed varied between 4 and 6.2 megabytes per second.

This is on a Dell XPS and a cable connection.

I can't give you an idea of what to expect with DSL.

Mike

 

[ASG0856]

The fastest connection in the world is all for nothing if you pick the wrong time of day to try a download. Here in the UK, between about 5.50pm and 6.30pm, the Internet virtually grinds to a halt because of the sheer number of people trying to log on to their ISP in that time period.

You can get only so much water down the pipe before it chokes (look into bernoulli's theorem).

 

[paparazi]

Are you sure about 4 to 6.2 megabytes per second that's very fast for a home connection.
The speed is often determined by the amount of traffic on a particular site, when it is busy the downloads can be painfully slow, revisit the site late at night and things may have improved dramatically.
Martin



We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.

 

[ASG0856]

my upload was a respectable 378 kb/s. while my download bandwith was only 17 kb/s....

By upload, I take it you mean from the Website to you. In which case you've got a very good rate (The best I've ever achieved on a 1.1mb DSL is 125kb/s.)

The download (ie response to the Website from you) is always a lot slower than the upload.

And remember, connection speeds and download speeds are not related. You Connection Speed is the size of the pipe, the Download Speed is how fast you can push the water down the pipe. Think about what happens when you're having a hot shower, and your mum turns on the hot tap down stairs.

 

[Sympology]

paparazi

Mike, proberbly means megaBITS.

That's good connection but not unheard of in the UK.

Likes of Telewest (now virgin) are trialing 50mb connections to the home. 10mb is a standard option.

Stu..

Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004

 

[Ploper001]

It's still very expensive though. Everything in the UK is, and it truly pisses me off. But, luckily where I live, and where we used to live, we can get Telewest, and it seems as if hardly anyone else in the neighbourhood has it because I've never seen it drop from full speed.

Thus, all the features of Cable super-fast broadband, no logging in (even without a router), no download limits, and no busy times

I just hope they increase the upload from the crapness that is 256/384Kbps soon...

 

[gbaughma]

378K Upstream is pretty good... but 17k downstream is horrible... slower than dialup.

I would call your ISP. If you are on cable, they may need to "balance" your node. If you are on DSL, there's something wrong.

THey probably have a setting wrong in your provisioning.



Just my 2¢
"Life gets mighty precious when there's less of it to waste." -Bonnie Raitt "Nick of Time"
--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com

 

[jesse83189]

cdogg-- i did your test and it said that i have

401.6 kilobits per second
Communications 401.6 kilobits per second
Storage 49 kilobytes per second
1MB file download 20.9 seconds
Subjective rating Not bad

thats nothing at all of what i had yester day..... but can someone explain this foreign writing to me

 

[felixc]

I have DSL. The download speed of some sites absolutely sucks, and some others show a very acceptable speed. This morning, downloading pdf files was occuring at 4KBps from a very high-end place, while transfers from other sites were coming at 70KBps.

The ISPs always blame someone else down the pipe when you complain. I remember calling them with a specific and repetitive problem, the answer I got was that from their desk they had no problem. Proving them wrong is a tedious task. I've had to go through pings and send them printscreens of the results.

Many of these ISP are competitors of the one who provides the high-speed trunk. Of course they will not give a priority to the problems of these competitors. Priorities of packet transfers is part of the Ethernet protocols, so they decide who gets the bandwidth. Unfortunately for me the cable modem would cost more than twice the DSL connection, so I guess that I just have to wait until the market rules change as more and more video streaming is done on the net.

 

[biglebowski]

I have telewest 10MB and more often than not can achieve 1MBps download and

http://www.speedtest.net/

often reports it as 9-12 MB.

When I was born I was so suprised I didn't talk for 18 months

 

[biglebowski]

When I was born I was so suprised I didn't talk for 18 months

 

[gbaughma]

biglebowski:

That's disgusting.



Just my 2¢
"Life gets mighty precious when there's less of it to waste." -Bonnie Raitt "Nick of Time"
--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com

 

[cdogg]

biglebowski,
That rocks!!

Jesse,
What is it that you don't understand? The test allows you to pick your state to find the nearest test location, which I assume you did. 401Kbps is not the greatest, but when compared to a 56Kbps dial-up connection, it's about 8 times faster.

I'm not sure who you're going through or how far away you are from the nearest DSLAM or CO (ask your provider), but the standard for DSL these days is 1.5Mbps which would be 4 times the speed of yours.

My ADSL connection gets up to 2.5Mbps (310KB/s) and I pay $20/month if that gives you any kind of reference to shoot for.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[cdogg]

Forgot to mention that some peeps tend to get their MB's and mb's mixed up. When you see Mb, that means megabits. When you see MB, that means megabytes. Network speeds are typically written in bps = bits per second.

Mbps = Megabits per second
Kbps = Kilobits per second

MB/s = Megabytes per second
KB/s = Kilobytes per second

It is easier to see how long it would take to download a large file by looking at the KB/s rating, which is why many of us make the conversion. You divide the Kbps by 8 to get KB/s, since there are 8 bits in 1 byte.

Hope that didn't confuse you more!

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[jesse83189]

ok its up and goging good now!!! i think it was just like the drain analogy

thanks a lot you guys have been helpful