Actual Download Rates

[fortkentdad]

So I've noticed now that I installed this download monitor that my download speed is a far cry from what Speednet says is my connection speed, which is slow by comparison but comes in at about 4 or 5 mb/s yet when I downloaded Windows 8.1 speed came in at a blistering 55 kbs, and now I'm downloading a game from STEAM and it's averaging 430 kbs. Is this normal? What does the 4 mbs mean?

[lowfat]

5Mbps (megabits) will get you about 625KB/s (kilobytes).

[enaberif]

Speedtest has been skewed for quite some time now with results and unfortunately isn't a tool I trust.

[draemn]

Most places that you download from will not upload at a speed as fast as your internet can handle. Microsoft is great for only giving you a slow trickle for download speeds. Steam is *usually* really good at using up as much bandwith as you can handle, so other than when major games come out, etc and steam is just flooded with downloads, you will be downloading games as fast as your internet lets you.

If you can download a game off steam at 430 KB/s, that means you're getting just shy of 4 mpbs from your internet.

[lowfat]

Originally Posted by draemn

Most places that you download from will not upload at a speed as fast as your internet can handle. Microsoft is great for only giving you a slow trickle for download speeds. Steam is *usually* really good at using up as much bandwith as you can handle, so other than when major games come out, etc and steam is just flooded with downloads, you will be downloading games as fast as your internet lets you.

If you can download a game off steam at 430 KB/s, that means you're getting just shy of 4 mpbs from your internet.

If you use something like Downloadthemall or another download accelerator you can generally get pretty quick download speeds. I can generally max my connection (2MB/s) on about 90% of websites. Unfortunately there are a few sites out there that do block the use of these.

[draemn]

Originally Posted by lowfat

If you use something like Downloadthemall or another download accelerator you can generally get pretty quick download speeds. I can generally max my connection (2MB/s) on about 90% of websites. Unfortunately there are a few sites out there that do block the use of these.

Interesting, I had never thought to see if such a program existed. Thanks for the tip.... bwahahah 100mbps download of almost anything!

[sswilson]

Downloading graphics drivers are usually a pretty good indication of your connection speed. Both AMD and Nvidia seem to max out my connection.

[SugarJ]

Keep in mind most download speeds are measured in Megabits per second. 8 bits = 1 byte, plus overhead for errorchecking. I get 5.5 MegaBytes/second download from Steam on my 50 Megabit/second connection.

One way to tell, bits are small b and bytes are large B.....

[Arinoth]

If you really want to know what your true download speed is, download a large file off of a website that has very good servers. The one I typically use is nVidia as the drivers are fairly large and their servers have always met whatever my maximum download speed was (aka I can saturate or get full download speed advertised by my ISP at 75Mbps from nVidia when I had that fibre internet).

[fortkentdad]

Originally Posted by draemn

Most places that you download from will not upload at a speed as fast as your internet can handle. Microsoft is great for only giving you a slow trickle for download speeds. Steam is *usually* really good at using up as much bandwith as you can handle, so other than when major games come out, etc and steam is just flooded with downloads, you will be downloading games as fast as your internet lets you.

If you can download a game off steam at 430 KB/s, that means you're getting just shy of 4 mpbs from your internet.

Thanks - that makes me feel a little better.

I thought the difference between a KB and MB should have been like 1000 times more so knowing that 400 kbs is roughly 4 mps means I'm getting what they say I should get (well they say 5 mps but that's sales hype I rarely get over 4 mps on Speednet).