really confused about speeds

the editor · 8 Jul 2012 at 19:42

Ok, so when I do a speed test on speedtest.net, it says I am getting 6.2Mbps, but when I actually download something, my speeds max out at about 300kB/s!

Why is this?! Someone please help!

Guy · 8 Jul 2012 at 19:47

Speed is measured in bits per second. Where as your hard drive will be in bytes per second. Divide line speed by 8 and you'll get close to the kB/s you're seeing.

the editor · 8 Jul 2012 at 19:48

What is line speed?

Guy · 8 Jul 2012 at 20:11

Sorry, the result of the speedtest (6.2Mbps) is your line speed.

the editor · 8 Jul 2012 at 20:13

Ok thanks, but that divided by 8 is 0.775?

oli356 · 8 Jul 2012 at 20:20

Yes, but you won't always get max speeds when downloading. Depends where you download from.. When I downloaded from a paid megaupload account in the past I got max speed, while downloading from steam I rarely got max speed.

Depends on the servers and network you are downloading from.

So if you're downloading at 300 KB/s, but speedtest is saying 775 KB/s, your just not downloading at max speed. I have a 50Mb line so capable of downloading at 6.25 MBs, but a lot of the time I will only get 1/6 of that.

the editor · 8 Jul 2012 at 20:22

Is there anyway that I could increase my speed?

oli356 · 8 Jul 2012 at 20:28

I doubt it. Like some places will limit what speed you can download at anyway (otherwise a bunch of people with their super fast broadband lines could come and use all of the bandwidth).

Where were you trying to download from anyway when you got 300 KBs?

the editor · 8 Jul 2012 at 20:42

Ok, thank you for your help, I understand it now

I'm trying to download Photoshop, maybe I should have just waited a couple of days and gone with the CD option :rolleyes: