[G4] Broadband Speed Liar's Poker

[David DelMonte]

Just an additional point that Sandor's examples are good for any type 
of data communication whether it's dial-up, DSL or cable.

David

On Dec 13, 2003, at 4:58 PM, sr ferenczy wrote:

> a Kilobit/second (Kbps) (normal parameter ISPs use to measure the 
> bandwidth they give you) is 8x greater than a Kilobyte/second (KBps) 
> (the normal parameter ftp clients, web browsers, etc use when 
> referring to network/transfer speed)
>
> 1500 Kbps would be 1500/8 or 187.5 KBps, 87.7 KBps would be 701.6 
> Kbps. so yes, that speed seems to be slower than your maximum, but the 
> limiting link in the chain is not necessarily your ISP, it could be 
> the server you are downloading from, or even some switch along the 
> line (the more "jumps" the more possibilities for slow downs)
>
> from a fast server, such as apple.com's with a large download, i get a 
> consistent 178 KBps (1424 Kbps) on my 1.5 Mbps DSL connection (thats 
> 1500 Kbps or 187.5 KBps)  -- 1 Mb=10 Kb --  BUT 1 MB=1024 KB!!
>
>
> confused yet?? =)
> your speed is looking good-if you tested at about 1500 Kbps, then the 
> server you were downloading the 87.7 KBps from is probably just 
> slower....
>
>
>
> sandor
>
>
> On Dec 13, 2003, at 4:36 PM, Richard M. Kriss wrote:
>
>> I know this has been discussed before but I am a new DSL user and very
>> confused on how to test my download speed. When I  do the speed test 
>> thing
>> at http://www.computers4sure.com/speed3.asp?Sp=1336 I get
>>
>> Your Speed is: 1336 Kbps  to 1550 Kbps
>>
>> When I watch the Safari download window it says
>>
>> 87.7 KB per sec
>>
>> Maybe I am getting confused by Kbps (bits per second) vs KB (Bytes) 
>> per
>> second.
>>
>> The new DSL setup seems much faster than the old 56K dialup 
>> connection but I
>> have no idea how good is good.  I have heard cable people say they are
>> getting 300 KB per sec.
>>
>> What is the correct term for quoting speed KB per sec or Kbps?
>>
>> What is a good figure for a DSL connection?  I don't care about 
>> comparing to
>> cable modems. I just want to know if my DSL is working okay.
>>
>> I wonder if the speed is more influenced by the application (Safari,
>> Netscape, Explorer and the new Mozilla Firebird)