Actual broadband speeds

Excuse the total newb question here please.

I know what download/upload speeds are etc and understand mbps/kbps but my question is more about the 'actual' download speed.

Let me give my situation as an example: I have been having some major connection issues with my BT Business Broadband connection and it has taken 2 weeks to resolve but unsatisfactorily.

I have run speed tests using both the BT speedtester site and spedtest.net and they both state that I have 2.5mbps download and 400kbps/upload. However, I have tried to run a few tests of my own by downloading files from my own business ftp server and various other sites to get a broad and average range of download speed comparables. I have yet to achieve anything faster that 350kbps/download.

Am I missing something or is this about right? If not then should I be complaining to BT even though their test results contradict my actual download speed?

Thanks for any guidance.

Zukan

Silly question. Your business server isn't on an ADSL link is it? If so, it's not 448Kbps upstream by any chance?

EDIT: Also - is it 350Kbps or 350KBps? This is the difference between bits and bytes. There are 8 bytes to a bit. Downloads are usually measured in bytes whereas internet is in bits.

Edited by ian72 (Fri 26-Mar-10 10:25:33)

Hi Ian,

Thnx for responding.

Okay, from speedtest.net I get:

2.9 Mbs download
0.37Mb/s upload.

Downloading a file from a website:

350 KB/sec

Am I misunderstanding the terminology and is everything as it should be or should I provide my BT test details?

In reply to a post by zukan:

2.9 Mbs download
0.37Mb/s upload.

Downloading a file from a website:

350 KB/sec

Am I misunderstanding the terminology and is everything as it should be or should I provide my BT test details?

That's about right.

2,900,000 bits per second = (divide by 8 to get bytes) = 362,500 bytes per second = 354KB/s.

WARNING:Random dribble section
Actually the KB/s figure there is a bit dodgy. For historical reasons I've treated 1kB as 1,024 bytes. That's actually an old and rather silly standard adopted back when computers were new and proper engineers hadn't got involved in the discipline. In these modern enlightened times 'proper' engineers should accept that there's 1,000 bytes in a kilobyte.

In any case it doesn't make much odds. The figures in your post are fine.

Andrue,

Thanks for the clarification.

I was a bit upset with friends saying they get 4 MB/sec download speeds. I felt BT were not being honest.

Exactly, they're are deluding themselves if they think they're getting 4 MB/sec. They may be getting around 4 megabits/second, divide by 8 so they're actually getting around 500 kilobytes/second.

Either that or they aren't on current ADSL technology. 4MB/s would be 32Mb/s so would require either Virgin 50Mb or a VDSL solution via FTTC or FTTP (or commercial services).

In reply to a post by ian72:

Either that or they aren't on current ADSL technology. 4MB/s would be 32Mb/s so would require either Virgin 50Mb or a VDSL solution via FTTC or FTTP (or commercial services).

http://blog.bethere.co.uk/2010/01/be-launches-line-b...

I knew I would miss at least one but how many different things should I have listed? Ah well...