3mb ntl broadband - d/load at only 100 kb/sec??

cruachan7

Hi, I am not technically minded or anything but was wondering if you can answer a question. I have just had the ntl 3mb broadband installed, when i download files (movies, mp3's etc) from many different sites, the download speed averages at 100k kb/sec. Smart have said that if I go with their 3mb broadband package my downloads will be guaranteed at 3000 kb/sec. Is there something wrong with my ntl connection? 100kb/sec is less than 5% of the speed i am paying for?

CuLT

www.speedtest.ie


come back with the results.

dub45

cruachan7 wrote:

Hi, I am not technically minded or anything but was wondering if you can answer a question. I have just had the ntl 3mb broadband installed, when i download files (movies, mp3's etc) from many different sites, the download speed averages at 100k kb/sec. Smart have said that if I go with their 3mb broadband package my downloads will be guaranteed at 3000 kb/sec. Is there something wrong with my ntl connection? 100kb/sec is less than 5% of the speed i am paying for?

Your dsl performance will be dependent on the quality of your line - no matter what Smart tell you - and I am a happy Smart customer by the way!

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/linestats.htm

CuLT

Also, I thought it didn't really bear mentioning at the time, but you will in your eye get 3000 kb/sec with Smart. If they told you that they lied, but I doubt they told you that.

You're probably getting speeds of 100kb/sec on p2p downloads, this is not unusual, public p2p is a woefully inadequate measure of your line speed.

The most you're going to get out of a 3MBit Smart connection is about 350 kb/sec, provided you max out your connection, which is rare on p2p networks.

Sarsfield

The sites you download from also have limits on how fast they can serve up the data. If there are a lot of people accessing a site, the available speed from that site will be shared. Some sites also limit how fast any one user can take data.

spawney

cruachan7 wrote:

Hi, I am not technically minded or anything but was wondering if you can answer a question. I have just had the ntl 3mb broadband installed, when i download files (movies, mp3's etc) from many different sites, the download speed averages at 100k kb/sec. Smart have said that if I go with their 3mb broadband package my downloads will be guaranteed at 3000 kb/sec. Is there something wrong with my ntl connection? 100kb/sec is less than 5% of the speed i am paying for?

Theres no way in the world you'll download at 3000kbps on a 3 meg line!

Foxwood

CuLT wrote:

The most you're going to get out of a 3MBit Smart connection is about 350 kb/sec,

Kb is Kbits. KB is KBytes.

350 kb/sec woud be a bit slow, 350KB/s would be what you'd want.

(No, I didn't make that up)

Foxwood

spawney wrote:

Theres no way in the world you'll download at 3000kbps on a 3 meg line!

3000kbps is 3000 kilobits/sec, which is 3 megabits/sec.

bk

Go to ftp.heanet.ie and choose two Linux ISO's to download. Download them at the same time, note the download speed of the two, add it together and multiple by 8. That should give you an accurate reading on your download speed.

When I had NTL 3m BB I use to always nearly get full speed.

Now that I have 10m, it varies more due to the ability of the server I'm downloading from, but if I start multiple downlaods from different sites then I can get close to 10m.

As others have said you can't measure your download speed by P2P, which is useless, why not tryout NTL's Binary Newsgroup servers which will give you much closer to max speed.

cruachan7

Thanks for the info. i ran the speed test and it said my download speed is 2.95 Mbps, is that good??? I am a bit p**sed off to be honest, the ntl brochure clearly states downloads speed of 3 MB ?

DingDong

That sounds fine to me cruachan7. Did you try download off ftp.heanet.ie ?

Foxwood

cruachan7 wrote:

Thanks for the info. i ran the speed test and it said my download speed is 2.95 Mbps, is that good??? I am a bit p**sed off to be honest, the ntl brochure clearly states downloads speed of 3 MB ?

2.95Megabits/s on a 3Megabit line?

Yeah, that's good.

Roen

That's a normal speed, try download this for about 10 or 15 minutes and see what your download settles at. ftp://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/ftp.mandrake.com/pub/mandrake/Mandrakelinux/official/iso/10.2/x86_64/Mandriva-Linux-2005-Limited-Edition-Download-CD.x86_64.iso

keyran

The Speed is up to 3Mb/ps so 2.95 is very good.

From a download point of view 2.95 would be giving you 368.75KB/ps.

By any chance is the 100 you are looking at down in the corner of the screen. If so this is the speed of the connection between your PC and the Modem and not the speed of your connection online.

1huge1

well there never going to have the full 3000kb/s all on one thing its spread out
all the same 100kb/s on a 3000kb/s is poor
im getting 250kb/s on a 1000kb/s sure

Snaga

Argh.

Lesson : Kilobits Vs Kilobytes - the neverending story's third installment.

Line speeds are measured in kilobits (Kb/s) or megabits (Mb/s) : Note the small 'b'!
Most programs measure actual download speeds in kilobytes (KB/s) or megabytes (MB/s) : Note the capital 'B'.

3Mbit/s (Small b!!) is roughly = 3000kbit/s (Small b!!).

3000Kbits/s (Small b!!) /8 (8bits in a Byte) = 375KBytes/s (Big B!!).

So keeping things simple, (And watching out for your capitilisation! )

On a 1Mbits/s line (1000kbit/s) I would expect a max throughput of 125KBytes/s
On a 2Mbits/s line (2000kbit/s) I would expect a max throughput of 250KBytes/s
On a 3Mbits/s line (3000kbit/s) I would expect a max throughput of 375KBytes/s

cruachan7

thanks again guys