Below are extracts from a couple of Broadband FAQ's which will give you some idea what to expect. I did the same and upgraded with iiNet to the 1500 plan. I'm on the Darlington exchange and can get an about 600k/sec on the downloading the test file direct from iiNet. Downloading from other places is a different matter and no where near as quick.
When reading the FAQ's make sure you distinguish the differences between kilobits and kiloBYTES as it can all get very confusing. Dave Watkins --------------------------------- http://whirlpool.net.au/faq-ab.cfm#1.1 I can only download at around 55-60k/sec, not 512kbps. Why is that? The measurement "kbps" is an abbreviation of kilobits per second. Most traditional phone line modems are rated this way (i.e. 56kbps). The measurement "k/sec" is considered an abbreviation of kiloBYTES per second. Most of the time, one byte equals 8 bits (and by extension, one kilobyte equals 8 kilobits). So when a cable or ADSL connection is capped at 512kbps, the maximum download speed that you can achieve is 64k/sec (though in most cases, you'll rarely get past 60k/sec). Phone line modems are a bit different, as they have a start bit and a stop bit to consider -- meaning that one byte requires a total of 10 bits. This means 56kbps modem can download at a maximum of 5.6k/sec per second, though this can sometimes be higher (due to compression) or lower (due to a poor connection). http://www.ozcableguy.com/broadband.html 1.1 How fast is Broadband? It varies considerably depending on where you're downloading from, but if we talk maximum speeds compared to dial-up - 56kbs Dial-up (up to around 5-7 kBytes/Sec) 256kbs ADSL (up to around 28 Kbytes/Sec) 512kbs ADSL (up to around 50 Kbytes/Sec) 1500kbs ADSL (up to around 150 Kbytes/Sec) Uncapped Cable (can go up to around 1100 Kbytes/Sec), but it varies a lot. Those sort of speeds you often get from local servers, Windows Update etc while with some servers you still might be lucky breaking 10 Kbytes/Sec. It varies quite a bit also from person to person depending on how many people are connected to the local "node", but generally with Cable if you're not getting at least 150-300 Kbytes/Sec from most sites then you've probably got a problem.
