[smax013]

Flashorn said:

My point to the last post was , that , if you DO have a choice , you should ,as you stated, read the fine print and do your home work before signing on the dotted line.

I agree 100%.



Personally, I choose not to consider DSL as phone companies seem to be a little more "complicit" with the government for things like monitoring email...partly due to the way the laws treat phone companies compared to cable companies. I will admit that it is largely due to me being paranoid about some thing, however! ;) It also helps that I have never had any serious trouble with my Comcast connection and I get fantastic speeds. Why "fix" what ain't broken, eh? !http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
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[Tech4me]

Techie4fun.....Another Lucky D....G....Alright ....How much for a month?

To me Cox is the best...But back then (2year ago) when I still lived inVA and It was about $40.00 amonth.

Now I moved down here in this Suck...complex..(Embard is a king in here)

Enjoy your High Speed....!http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
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[Tech4me]

Evildave..Thats even better.....Thinking about getting that too.

If I go for Wireless card , I think Verizon is better for me around here.

Thanks for indepht info...

[Tech4me]

Smax. Now I know whats up with cable vs dsl.. Thanks.

BTW.I have DSL...Whenever I download, It always starts with 120Mb/s then quickly goes down to 50Mb/s ..? Whats up with this..?

[smax013]

Tech4me said:

Smax. Now I know whats up with cable vs dsl.. Thanks.

BTW.I have DSL...Whenever I download, It always starts with 120Mb/s then quickly goes down to 50Mb/s ..? Whats up with this..?

First of all, if you are actually getting a consistant 50 Mb/s connection, then that is SUPERDUPER BLAZINGLY fast. Most cable connections are about 6 to 10 Mb/s. T3 lines max out at about 45 Mb/s.



As to why you see those speeds and the change in the speeds...I cannot really say. It will somewhat depend on when/how you see it. If you see it momentarily at first and then they REALLY drop off, that is likely due to inaccuracies from limited data (i.e. you have only transferred a few bits or bytes and so the measurement is based off a few measurements and have not had a chance to "average" out).

[Tech4me]

Yes , I got 50Mb/s most of the time,,,,,,But I have seen it went down to 11Mb/s.
Thanks for sharing.

(No more complaining.....)

[Number3124]

Are you sure it's not Kb/s?

[mphenterprises]

Tech4me said:

!http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/

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Quote

Hi Tech4Me. I believe there may be a bit of confusion. Your initial post shows 536kb/s. The speeds you indicated in your latest posts would be closer to FIOS speeds than your indicated DSL connection.

[Tech4me]

[~54583] . I'm not so sure? This is what it said :

!http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
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When I 'm downloading is said 120Kb/s then drops down to 50Kb/s. Any ideas?

[mphenterprises]

The signal quality you see is standard for wireless connections. That is not your actual download speed. Since you have DSL, your download speed will, more than likely, never top out above 1.5Mb/s (megabits not megabytes per second). There are eight bits in one byte. Therefore, your top download speed you can expect to reach is approximately 187kb/s (Kilobytes per second). These are only approximate values. Those that know more about networking, please fill in any holes.

[smax013]

mphenterprises said:

The signal quality you see is standard for wireless connections. That is not your actual download speed. Since you have DSL, your download speed will, more than likely, never top out above 1.5Mb/s (megabits not megabytes per second). There are eight bits in one byte. Therefore, your top download speed you can expect to reach is approximately 187kb/s (Kilobytes per second). These are only approximate values. Those that know more about networking, please fill in any holes.

That would be 187 kB/s (little b is bits...big B is bytes).

[mphenterprises]

Oh nevermind....it's too late in the day. :p



Bottom line, unfortunately Tech4Me, your top download speeds will not reach the figures you stated. The only way you can reach anything close to those would be to get FIOS or a T3 connection.

[Tech4me]

Mph.,,,my bad,,,,I got 50kb/s downloading( regardless what it said on the test result) Is it way too slow for standard DSL.?

and why does it say 536kb/s on the test ?

sorri for confusing.

[smax013]

Tech4me said:

[~54583] . I'm not so sure? This is what it said :

!http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/

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>

When I 'm downloading is said 120Kb/s then drops down to 50Kb/s. Any ideas?

[/quote]
What you see indicated there is your wireless connection protocol speed. The 54 Mbps (or Mb/s) indicates that you likely have an 802.11g wireless connection...and that is indicating your theoretical maximum data rate for your 802.11g connection (which is 54 Mbps for 802.11g). When browing the web, however, your bottle neck will be your ISP connection speed. DSL connections will go from about 768 kbps up to several Mbps depending on how much you pay. Most are in the 768 kbps to about 2 Mbps range, but you can get faster I believe. Most cable modem connection will max out at about 6 to 10 Mbps. The point is that a home broadband connection (in the US) will never get even close to the typical throughput of an 802.11g connection (which is about 23 Mbps unless you get to the far reaches of the range). The only way you will see the full speed of a WiFi connection is if you are tranferring files between two computers on your own internal network (i.e. copying files between two of your own computers).



Now, I should note that I believe home broadband speeds in places like Japan make the US broadband connections look slow from what I understand.

[mphenterprises]

Tech4me said:

Is it way too slow for standard DSL.?

I really cannot confirm whether or not this is too slow for DSL or not. I believe SMax provided a very thorough explanation of the varying differences when using DSL or cable connections.

Tech4me said:

and why does it say 536kb/s on the test ?

I could be wrong, but I believe that is kilobits per second which would make your download speed about 67 kilobytes per second.

[Tech4me]

[~39874] . Thank you for clearing it out. You did a great job to explain that.!http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
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[Tech4me]

I got you...... But,,.No purchase for FIOS (Embard is not ready there yet,,,At lease in my area).

Thanks.

[smax013]

mphenterprises said:

Oh nevermind....it's too late in the day. :p


Bottom line, unfortunately Tech4Me, your top download speeds will not reach the figures you stated. The only way you can reach anything close to those would be to get FIOS or a T3 connection.

Looks like you editted your original post...this differs from the email notice that I got.



Just to note, it is typically kB for kilobyte (little k big B), but some do use KB (big K big B) and it is considered "acceptable" for the kilos. Mega is always big M as is Giga being big G...at least for bits and bytes.



I should now go have a "bit of a byte" of dinner! Ha! I made a "funny"! !http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
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[smax013]

Tech4me said:

[~39874] . Thank you for clearing it out. You did a great job to explain that.!http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/

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>





[/quote]
To illustrate speed variations from a cable connection, here are test results from a test a moment ago:







Notice that the download is faster then what I reported last night by about 1000 kb/s. I will note that I was running a test that was seeming to show about 11000 kb/s when IE crashed on me.