what internet speed should i be getting???

jellyfish · Post by **jellyfish** » Fri Aug 19, 2005 1:10 pm

I finally got my internet connection put back on two days ago and I've been running loads of speed tests and I was wondering what sort of speeds I should be expecting.

these are my speed test results:

bandwidth palace: 4 megabits per second
bulldog= 3562 kilobits per second
zdnet= 5224.1 Kbps
zen= 5161 Kbps

I'm meant to be getting 8 megabits per second

I think that the connection ratio is 40:1.

what other factors could affect my speed? and are those tests actually reliable???

my network has two computers on connected to a switch by RJ45 cables, the switch is connected to the router/modem (zoom X3) by another RJ45 cable and that in turn is connected to a microfilter which goes into a phone socket downstairs via an extension lead.

I connected my computer up direct today and the speed tests showed different results:

zen: 10000 Kbps (kilobits per second)
zdnet: 5506.1 Kbps
bulldog: 3168.7 kilobits per second
bandwidth palace: 3.2 megabits per second
so is there anything else I can do to increase my speed? (don't know much about this sort of thing).

I can post up my adsl status page from my modem if you want.

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Fri Aug 19, 2005 1:33 pm

Well here we're suppost to be getting 5mbps but we only get like 500kbps, so you're doing good. ISPs inderectly lie about the speed. I think what they really mean is that the equipment can handle up to the speed they advertise, but their upstream provider can't handle that speed times the number of customers. At least that's how it is with my isp. The minute they "upgraded" from 1 to 5 mbps, speeds were lower.

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jellyfish · Post by **jellyfish** » Fri Aug 19, 2005 1:50 pm

A company called "Be" says that they are going to be introducing 24 meg broadband in the autumn.

the bulldog website has been changed recently, they now state: "up to 8 Meg" because loads of people complained because the original ad stated that it will be "8 Meg alltime"...I don't expect 8 Meg I just wanted to know what else I could do to get the best from my connection. My actual speed is between 2 and 3 meg but I'll be happy with 4 or 5 Meg. It actually costs less than the 1 meg I had before with the same company.

I just opened emule up for the first time and got a speed of 920 KB/s! Shame I can't think of anything I want to download right now.

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Fri Aug 19, 2005 1:56 pm

With p2p you'll always get low speeds. Today, most p2p networks suck. Too much overhead I guess.

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jellyfish · Post by **jellyfish** » Fri Aug 19, 2005 2:00 pm

yeah I was shocked that I was downloading so fast. Emule is ok because files get downloaded in chunks from a number of sources at the same time.

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sintekk · Post by **sintekk** » Fri Aug 19, 2005 5:06 pm

Red Squirrel wrote: With p2p you'll always get low speeds. Today, most p2p networks suck. Too much overhead I guess.

BitTorrent for teh win

Non-Centralised (excluding the tracker, of course) + Everybody must share = good rates for all!

Course, if your upload rate is significantly lower than your download rate, BitTorrent will probably disappoint you. eMule is similar to BitTorrent, but I find BT faster.

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Fri Aug 19, 2005 6:07 pm

Yeah bittorrent is decent, but I think it has to be made easier to share, like maybe there should be a way to mass make torrents and automaticly keep them up to date on a tracker, or something. I have lot of stuff I'd like to share but have not been bothered to figure out how.

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Cold Drink · Post by **Cold Drink** » Fri Aug 19, 2005 6:24 pm

Bit Torrent is getting cooler, and the better clients can make the sharing process simpler. Many BT clients (and now BT itself) support truly distrubuted networks that don't need trackers.

Anyway, there are lots of reasons to see a slower speed. Most notably, as already stated, is advertised speeds are maximums.

On a cable network you share bandwidth so, particularly during peak hours, your actualy max sustainable througput drops. It seems as if DSL modems negotiate speed as do regular modems, which can effect things as well. I'm getting 3 down, 0.75-ish up and am suposed to get 4 down, 0.5 up.

Then there is overhead and tuning issues. Of course there is some overhead in the TCP and IP protocols themselves which eat up some bandwidh, and larger packet sizes reduce the relitive percentage of that overhead. Packets too large get broken up, which slows things down. Also, those little broadband modems and routers are typicaly very low powered and are being pushed to do more and more like packet mangling, traffic shaping, bla bla bla...

If you want to increace througput, play around with the more obsucure networking settings. Search around for broadband connection optimization, or something to that effect. If you want to decreace thigns like web page load times, using a local, caching name server can give you a huge percieved speed boost.

People in other countries get speeds more than 10 times what we get in north America

Of course most countries are smaller than a single state or provence...

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sintekk · Post by **sintekk** » Fri Aug 19, 2005 6:52 pm

Red Squirrel wrote: Yeah bittorrent is decent, but I think it has to be made easier to share, like maybe there should be a way to mass make torrents and automaticly keep them up to date on a tracker, or something.

Check this out:
http://www.bittorrent.com/trackerless.html

Trackerless Support isn't very popular yet, and there are many communities that understandably disable Trackerless Support on the torrents they distribute, but it sounds like what you are talking about.

As for making a torrent, check this out:
http://krypt.dyndns.org:81/torrent/maketorrent/index.phtml

I'm not sure if that program supports making trackerless torrents or not.

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sintekk · Post by **sintekk** » Fri Aug 19, 2005 6:54 pm

Cold Drink wrote: People in other countries get speeds more than 10 times what we get in north America Of course most countries are smaller than a single state or provence...

Yeah, that's a shame. Think they'd have something like that worked out for some of the bigger cities (e.g. New York)

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jellyfish · Post by **jellyfish** » Fri Aug 19, 2005 6:58 pm

sintekk wrote:
Cold Drink wrote: People in other countries get speeds more than 10 times what we get in north America Of course most countries are smaller than a single state or provence...
Yeah, that's a shame. Think they'd have something like that worked out for some of the bigger cities (e.g. New York)

I'm in the UK and the norm here is 2 meg, most companies upgraded everyone a while back, London will be getting 24 Meg in a few months (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/21/be_broadband/), 20 meg in France is quite common aswell.

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sintekk · Post by **sintekk** » Fri Aug 19, 2005 7:02 pm

Check this article out:
http://news.com.com/South+Korea+leads+the+..._3-5261393.html
It's a year old, but it still gets the point across. The internet tech in Japan and South Korea has left the US in the dust. I'm not very familiar with the situation in the UK, but if 2 meg is the norm, you guys are ahead of us as well

EDIT:
"Be - the broadband ISP that doesn't have any punters yet - has confirmed that its 24 meg service will cost less than £30 a month."

Holy Crap

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