DSL, Riddle Me This, Riddle Me That....

[Guest]

Calling any DSL techies out there...

Wondered if anyone could fill in the gaps for me below?...

-The downstream rate on my DSL router shows as approx 19Mb
-Speedtest websites indicate my downstream rate can vary anything between 2Mb and 14Mb throughout the day/night.
-When I try to download large files I seem to be capped to 0.5Mb

[precious007]

this issue is related to your DSL provider as well...

It's not only your router.

and it always varies, downloading from torrents for example will set a certain download speed right from their servers/pc's (the seeders)

i.e When there's 2000 seeders on a torrent site you will definitely get bandwidth and a higher speed unlike when there's only 2 ...

if you're provider has set a download speed and says... for example 20 MB/s that doesn't mean you can reach that number necessarily ... that's the maximum you can get.

I'm on optic fiber though a router as well and at times I get 100 mb/s on nearby servers... I do pay quite a lot though monthly ;-)

downloading from one website (a file hosting for example) will give you a download speed that they've set from their software.... and so on...

There's like 1000 things to consider when talking about the up/download speed.

It's sort of like ... what you see is what you get...

I have 2 mobile connections as well ... only use them when I'm out...

The two providers promised a download speed of 5 - 20mb/s ... I mean I was just fooled to believe that when you can barely watch videos properly even with the top notch laptop in the world

[Guest]

Makes me wonder whether it's my new DSL provider. My previous one only promised up to 7.5Mb but when you downloaded a large file it utilised the full 7.5Mb. That was business grade DSL though. Then my new provider promised up to 20Mb and I get 0.5Mb :/

Gave up on mobile broadband. Provider promised up to 8Mb with 'super' dongle and it delivered just under 0.5Mb and was constantly dropping out. Weird thing with that one too was I get a 5/5 bar 3G+ signal on my cellphone but the dongle struggled to grab a 3/5 bar 3G signal :s Telco was like so 'are we bothered?' so I told them where to stick that.

[precious007]

Then my new provider promised up to 20Mb and I get 0.5Mb :/

This happens very often .... the 20 MB / s is only a marketing scheme to make it sound true, lol

Just something you should know if you're using a mobile device (USB modem) ... in case you have one.. most of them work faster on high speed USB's so make sure you have a a high speed port on your laptop or pc...

[lxskllr]

You could also have a beat modem. I'm fairly weak with networking, but you may be able to find some tips online for tweaking your modem settings. Enter the modem model/number and combine it with "tweak" and "hack" and see if anything interesting pops up. You could also research your provider, and see if other people are complaining about the same thing. If the transfer is torrent based, the isp may be throttling due to packet inspection. If so, turn on encryption on your torrent client, and see if it improves. That obfuscates the nature of the connection, and will sometimes beat throttling techniques.

[ratcheer]

You could also have a beat modem. I'm fairly weak with networking, but you may be able to find some tips online for tweaking your modem settings. Enter the modem model/number and combine it with "tweak" and "hack" and see if anything interesting pops up. You could also research your provider, and see if other people are complaining about the same thing. If the transfer is torrent based, the isp may be throttling due to packet inspection. If so, turn on encryption on your torrent client, and see if it improves. That obfuscates the nature of the connection, and will sometimes beat throttling techniques.

I agree. Go to website http://www.dslreports.com They have tools that you can run online to see how your connection is doing and other tools you can download to "tweak" your network settings to improve them, based on the recommendations of the first tools.

Tim