8 Meg broadband

[Mac attack]

I am wondering whether this is a bit of a rip off!! I currently have 2meg broadband (Nildram) and use a Mac with Safari browser. Any time I download something I get a pop up box telling me the speed of the download. So far the highest speed I have downloaded at is 250kps and that includes downloads from blog sites, yahoo, bbc etc. This leads me to believe that my download speed is governed by the web hosting companies who host these sites. Am I right then in thinking that these high speed connections being offered now such as 8meg and even 2meg are only of use if downloading from lots of places at once or if you are using multiple computers from the same connection?

[WoWo]

You are half right. As you say bandwidth is determined across the whole of the network if at any point there is a link in the chain that is running at less that 8meg thats the best you will get.

Most hosting companies site on top of other larger companies which offer a high bandwidth but anywhere in the chain can effect this. Also there are limits at the other end, for many sites you will not be the only person downloading and this will effect the speed coming for the other end.

I went from 1 to 2 last year and I couldn't tell the difference.

[OBonio]

There is still also the contention ratio to consider.

http://usertools.plus.net/tutorials/id/11

[Ralph]

Maybe I'm getting you a bit wrong here, ignore me if I am!

Since your broadband is 2 megabits (2048 bits) per second download speed, this translates to 256 kilobytes per second, so your broadband speed is correct. If you were to get 8meg broadband, this gives you 1MB per second download (8 bits to the byte!) so as the others have stated, if all the links upstream of you can supply you with data at this speed, that's what you'll see. Otherwise, it'll be the speed of the slowest connection.

[Mac attack]

My broadband is 2megabits per second and my downloads are typically between 100 and 250 Kilobits per second (not kilobytes) .

I am not moaning about my broadband as I have tested it on adslguide, just about the speed that web hosts allow you to download there webpages / files at.

[ugly_bob]

Basically, you can only download at the slowest max speed available between you and the host. Could be the traffic on the host slowing it, or your exchange, or your contention. At the moment you're unlikely to see any difference between 2Mb/s and 8Mb/s on most places, but as the infrastructure gets updated it'll change.

Certainly, If you're only getting 250Kb/s on a 2M connection, it won't be any faster on a 8M one

[Gandy]

I have 10mbps per sec and I'm lucky to get 350kbs most of the time so you're download speed isn't too bad at all