Download Speeds

[vulcans]

Can anyone tell me why, when your computer is connected to the internet, it states Im connected at 52Kbps and yet when I try to download videos or music, it only downloads at around 6Kbps. My ISP is NTL, is it my computer that needs some attention, or are NTL and other ISP's trying to get us all to move over to broadband.. If I could download what I needed at 52Kbps I would be happy with what Ive got, but at 6Kbps it is painfully slow at times..

[darth vader]

There are a few factors here:
Firstly the speed of the connection is dictated by the speed of the slowest modem i.e. if your modem is 56k but the server which holds the file/web page has only a 33k modem, then the max speed of the connection will be 33k

Secondly, your modem being 56k is the expressed bandwidth threshold of your modem. by this i mean if you have two browsers open, both loading a page/downloading a file, then each browser will be using 28k each

Thirdly i suspect you are getting confused between kbps "kilobits per second" and K "kilobytes per second" (remembering there are 8 bits per byte) so if it is downloading at 6k / second = 6 X 8 kilobits / second = 48 Kilobits / second which is not far off the threshold of the modem. Its a bit annoying but basically people get confused as the modem is measure in kilobits whereas the download is measured by the operating system in kilobytes (don't ask me i don't know why)

[darth vader]

...i think it's a "big-endian / little-endian" thing (why one is kbps and the other is kps)