Broadband Speeds only 10%?

mediamatt · 19 Feb 2013 at 18:08

Hi,

Could somebody explain to me why I am on 40mb broadband but when I download anything its 4mb/s approx. Was the same when I was on 8mb broadband , would download at 800kb/s?

Why?

Matt

snips86x · 19 Feb 2013 at 18:11

That is how it works mate! I'm on 20mb and I get 2-3mb/s

mediamatt · 19 Feb 2013 at 18:12

In fact tonight im only getting 33mb approx. but still only 10% of that speed when downloading??

mediamatt · 19 Feb 2013 at 18:12

snips86x said:
That is how it works mate! I'm on 20mb and I get 2-3mb/s

How come? I would have thought if I have a 33MB connection , I would get 33MB per second?

HecFam · 19 Feb 2013 at 18:13

Do you mean you're on 40Mb broadband, but only getting 4MB? there are 8 bits in a byte, so any quoted speed in bits will be 8 times less in bytes.

Im on 60Megabits, which means i can get a max of 7.5 Megabytes.

It can also depend on the server you are downloading from and the lines connecting to the server. Try other downloads and see if its the same speed, could just be your connection to the ms servers.

IncognitoX · 19 Feb 2013 at 18:15

HecFam said:
Do you mean you're on 40MB broadband, but only getting 4Mb? there are 8 bits in a byte, so any quoted speed in bits will be 8 times less in bytes.

Im on 60Megabits, which means i can get a max of 7.5 Megabytes.

+1, unfortunately you haven't made the conversion, bits to bytes.

i.e. 30 megabits a second = 3 megabytes a sec download speeds.

mediamatt · 19 Feb 2013 at 18:18

aah so the 40mb is megabits not bytes. That explains it lol

Thanks for the help

olivier renault · 19 Feb 2013 at 18:36

Bits and bytes. Not the same.

And then there's the gotcha whether they consider a 'K' 1,024 (2^10), or 1,000.

SheriffHD · 20 Feb 2013 at 03:13

Yeah the classic misunderstanding people make (which is also equals to a fun time when you get the sales guy knocking on your door)

They quote you in megabits. But your downloads will show in megabytes. (its all about conversions)
1 megabyte = 8 megabits

Next time you get a sales call be sure to confuse the hell out of them as you can be sure as hell that they dont know the difference. And its fun to watch em squirm.

SaltandSauce · 20 Feb 2013 at 18:06

As it has already been stated, unfortunately it just doesn't work like that. There are many factors that need to be considered which includes things such as whether your connection is hard wired or wireless, if you are on cable or ADSL, where you are are downloading from/uploading to etc.

In an ideal world we would all be getting the speeds we pay for but life is life. ISPs are always careful how they word their advertising to ensure they prevent any lawsuits coming their way. For example, if you're paying for a 24MB ADSL service, you'll find your ISP will say "you will receive a connection up to 24MB".

KIA · 21 Feb 2013 at 14:14

@SaltandSauce you're adding to the confusion by using MB (megabyte) instead of Mb (megabit).