Clarence,
I cannot believe you actually believed you would get the promised speeds
of DSL. :>
I have cable modem capable of 10Mbs down, with all other links T1 or
better.
It took 1:54 [114 seconds] to download & render that Hubbard pic; 2 sec
were used in converting the jpg to bmp, so download time was 112
seconds.
The catch is the "capable of" and "up to" ...
I tried to explain it to a number of people over a year ago, but I'll
try yet another time.
* The primary determinent of download speeds is the server you are
downloading from!
I watched the "count up" as I was getting that pic, and was able to see
not only a "slow" rate, but some OBVIOUS HESITATIONS ... stutter stops
that can really slow down access.
You see, the speed of your downloads these days is *VERY* dependent upon
the server you are accessing. If it is being hit heavily [like a
government site that specializes in those gorgeous photos from the
Hubbard Telescope], you could be sharing the server's time with a
thousand or more other people. And that can mean it takes a thousand
times longer to download.
Remember, my cable modem/NIC combo [10T] is CAPABLE of 10Mbs, which
means that theoretically I could download that JPG in 2-3 tenths of a
single second. Instead I got a transfer rate of 15,964 bytes per
second. [I decided to avoid bps because I can remember some sort of
broughhaha about the b being bits and were they 7 or 8 per byte or ???
Is my modem broken? Do I need a new NIC? ... nah Just have to stop
expecting fast access from slow servers. :>
l.d.
P.S. Putting in a "faster" NIC wouldn't make much difference; the speed
is limited by the DSL modem, just like my speed is limited to
10Megabytes per second by my cable modem. I say that with some
assurance, since I asked one of the techs if I could speed up things
with a faster NIC...
====
On Tue, 07 Aug 2001 01:23:22 -0400, Clarence Verge wrote:
> Hi All;
> I've been using the download of this image to test my connection speed
> on DSL and it seems pretty poor to me:
> http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/IMAGES/MEDIUM/GPN-2000-000938.jpg
> It's 1,787,955 bytes and the best time I can get on DSL is 2:20 (140 Sec).
> That's with A1.66 and Bell high speed internet connection.
> With my dial-up connection running @ 31200 I get it in 10:06 (606 Sec)
> using A1.62.
> Does my DSL speed suck or is this normal ? They claim up to 1.5 Mb/sec.
> I think I'm getting 130Kb/sec. :((
> I've tried 4 different NICs - 3 were 100Mbps and the above time is
> the best I could do.
