Broadband speeds?

LittleKing · April 24th, 2003, 11:51 AM

I was reading this article, found at Cnet.com, titled Cable beats DSL in speed race. While the main point of the article is interesting, which was that cable is on average faster than DSL (which most people might have assumed anyway), I was more interested in another aspect.

The article quotes several companies averages of Cable connection speeds. I was wondering how your speed comparies to each companies speeds.

I am using comcast, and it seems that the fastest I connect at is right at 150 kbps and my average would be less than that speed. From the average of Comcast, 794kbps, I am connecting really, really slow. Maybe I need to test my speed a different way, or maybe Comcast is recording speeds a different way, but this seems really slow compared to their average.

What speed and what company are you connected with? I would like to know if most people here are connecting slower, on average, or faster than the llisted speeds.

Also, has anybody contacted their providers and asked if they could provide their average connection speed? If not maybe we should see if that information is available.

So in short is here is list of items I would like to receive information on:

1. Who is your service provider?
2. What is your average & fastest connection speeds?
3. Have you contacted your provider to see if they can supply your average connection speed?

Thanks,
LK

osprey4 · April 24th, 2003, 12:00 PM

Your speed looks like it could use some tweaking. Have you used the tweak test at DSLReports?

http://www.dslreports.com/faq/tweaks

You can also find their list of fastest ISPs from a link on their front page, including yours.

I have Optimum Online, one of the fastest cable providers in the business. Typical speeds are 8 Mbps down/1 Mbps up.

jkrohn · April 24th, 2003, 12:01 PM

I think your confusion lies in bits vs bytes

There are 8 bits in a single byte.

800 kbps = 100 kBps
bits per second = bytes per second.

You are more than likely seeing 150 kBps (what something like IE will report when you download things) which actually translates into 1200 kbps so you are actually above the average

As far as your info goes
1) Insight BB
2) Average around 2 Mbps, max around 3.2 Mbps
3) No need

Jkrohn

muno · April 24th, 2003, 12:03 PM

You might want to edit your equality a bit, as bps!=Bps.

My connection info is insignificant as I live outside u.s.

-M

Kc2iLq · April 24th, 2003, 12:05 PM

Optimum Online (Cablevision)
I can just about download as fast as anyone can upload. This is up to about a T1 speed. I have, however had multiple connections to a DS3 and have gotten 4.5Mb/s download speeds. With cable, it really depends on how many people are using bandwidth on your node while you download. There is an overhead of 10Mb/s, but that is really never achievable. As for uploading, I rarely get more than 150Kb/s, but off peak, it spikes to 300 or so.
My ISP says that the download is 10Mb max and upload is 1Mb max. I guess if you were the only one using the connection, that would be true. That will never be the case though.

-Kc2iLq

osprey4 · April 24th, 2003, 12:09 PM

Kc2iLq, are you sure your upload is in kilobits? 150 kbps seems very slow. I've never seen anything less than 900. Even when the download is slow, our upload is always good.

Or were you (GASP!!) capped due to violating the Prime Directive (no server).

rockpile · April 24th, 2003, 12:28 PM

Comcast states an average speed of best effort up to 1500kbps

I have comcast and usually get between 1700-1900kbps downstream which is very good for what I pay.

I would say you are getting good speeds

BobOmega · April 24th, 2003, 12:40 PM

i hope all of you are happy.

i have armstrong zoom.
.5Mbps down 256kbps up
its caped at that so i will preaty much get that whenever i want no matter what.

MDS · April 24th, 2003, 12:47 PM

Cableone
1000 Kbps down/200 Kbps up but I get better than that 95% of the time
No ploblem as it $35 a month for a great service.

LittleKing · April 24th, 2003, 06:43 PM

I should have looked a little closer.

jkrohn: I do know about he converstion, but the program I was using didn't display the speed that way, it said 100k/sec. I assumed it meant kbps, but after trying a few other programs I realized it was actually 100kB/sec. I guess I should have researched a bit more.

Well at least I know now and got a link to a pretty neat site as well.

http://www.dslreports.com/faq/tweaks

Thanks all,
LK