Why Don't Download Speeds Reach Advertised Limits?

[patonb]

It's also why hard drives are in Gigbytes, as a 100Gig drive really only shows as 95ish.

 

[moshkid213]

It's also why hard drives are in Gigbytes, as a 100Gig drive really only shows as 95ish.

Thats a different story. Hardware see's it was 1000KB's per 1MB, but software see's it as 1024KB's per 1MB.

Thats the reasoning behind that. I havn't looked further into it.

 

[KSoD]

The main thing to know, is that no matter what is said or advertised by your ISP, what you download is NOT controlled by your ISP. It is controlled by the server in which you are downloading from.

Say you are going to download XP Mode for Win7 (Since it gets released today). Now you know you have a 1.5Mb/s connection. But think about it, Microsoft has to feed MILLIONS of people this file. There is no way they could feed every single request at their desired speed. That would require bandwidth and connection speeds to their servers so large that it makes a home GB network look like dialup.

So these places put a cap on how much each connection can get when downloading a file. This way everyone who wants the file can get it and they all get it about the same speed. This way servers can feed the requests and still keep the site/file online.

As for the hard drive, they are noticed as 1024 at both hardware and software level. Have to remember that it is more so at that level than software because the hardware drives the software, the software only reports what the hardware tells it to. The hardware it sees it as 1024 because it goes in double variants. Look at RAM.

2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096 and so on. That is how RAM has been measured since PC's first started. Harddrives are no different. They started off the same exact way. I remember my first GB hard drive. I remember my first 64MB hard drive. It all started off the same exact way.

 

[moshkid213]

The main thing to know, is that no matter what is said or advertised by your ISP, what you download is NOT controlled by your ISP. It is controlled by the server in which you are downloading from.

Say you are going to download XP Mode for Win7 (Since it gets released today). Now you know you have a 1.5Mb/s connection. But think about it, Microsoft has to feed MILLIONS of people this file. There is no way they could feed every single request at their desired speed. That would require bandwidth and connection speeds to their servers so large that it makes a home GB network look like dialup.

So these places put a cap on how much each connection can get when downloading a file. This way everyone who wants the file can get it and they all get it about the same speed. This way servers can feed the requests and still keep the site/file online.

As for the hard drive, they are noticed as 1024 at both hardware and software level. Have to remember that it is more so at that level than software because the hardware drives the software, the software only reports what the hardware tells it to. The hardware it sees it as 1024 because it goes in double variants. Look at RAM.

2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096 and so on. That is how RAM has been measured since PC's first started. Harddrives are no different. They started off the same exact way. I remember my first GB hard drive. I remember my first 64MB hard drive. It all started off the same exact way.

Generally you won't be capped by anything outside your ISP unless it's in the case like what you just explained. Such as software being released for the first time and everyones bum-rushing to get it. Im generally capped at 235KB/s for download speed, thats what most things download for me. Upload, is well, horrible. 20kb/s or so. But its military internet for the barracks, so Im not complaining, its better then what I had on my last post.

All your ISP is is a node. Nodes have switches and routers just like everything else. Every thing has bandwidth caps, especially on trunks and what not.

Why do you think all phone calls are transcoded after they leave your local call area to G729 instead of G711.

G711 codec runs around 64kb's a phone call, where-as G729 runs around 8KB's. UDP of course. The reason we use G711 for local calls? It requires less processing power from the router then if we were to use 729 all the time.

 

[patonb]

On the HD, i was just saying its sold as the larger, to makd you think youre getting more...

 

[KSoD]

Generally you won't be capped by anything outside your ISP unless it's in the case like what you just explained. Such as software being released for the first time and everyones bum-rushing to get it. Im generally capped at 235KB/s for download speed, thats what most things download for me. Upload, is well, horrible. 20kb/s or so. But its military internet for the barracks, so Im not complaining, its better then what I had on my last post.

All your ISP is is a node. Nodes have switches and routers just like everything else. Every thing has bandwidth caps, especially on trunks and what not.

Why do you think all phone calls are transcoded after they leave your local call area to G729 instead of G711.

G711 codec runs around 64kb's a phone call, where-as G729 runs around 8KB's. UDP of course. The reason we use G711 for local calls? It requires less processing power from the router then if we were to use 729 all the time.

Generally you will be capped. The thing is that these sites serve how many people and how many connections at once. The point is that even a site like this which has its own dedicated host still has a Server Center that it comes out from. As such there is at most 4 GB connection lines to serve all uploads, downloads and connections for all sites that are at that server center. Some have more, like Microsoft, some have less.

Servers like Microsoft's show it even better for HTTP downloads cause i can show you proof of it. I can go download a file, say XP Mode, from their HTTP site and get roughly 250Mb/s. I can then use the Microsoft File Transfer Manager, which is like a FTP, and get the same exact file but at around 1MB/s down.

So yes everything on a HTTP server is capped. I can tell you this from personal experience from getting things from HTTP versus FTP not only from Microsoft but from my personal server as well.

Generally speaking all HTTP downloads are capped for the very reasons i have stated. To serve a file download will hurt the loading of a site to many other connections. Simple as that. Cap the HTTP Downloads, better serve the public who wants to view the site rather than the 1 person who wants to download a file.

 

[farinha]

Well, your ISP also has contention rates. They only assure the bandwidth between your house and the telephone central you're connected to. From that point on it's a best effort situation (I'm talking about general internet, not IPTV, VoIP and such). For example, here in Portugal, in some centrals the DSLAM, the equipment where the clients are connected, have an uplink of 34Mbps or 155Mbps. So, if there are 200 clients connected to the same DSLAM with a bandwith of 2Mbps, and all of them are making a download at the same time, there isn't enough bandwith in the DSLAM uplink to satisfy the full speed for all costumers. Of course the probability of this happening is very low.
Of course, Mak is right, the server where you're downloading the file from limits your download speed depending on the number of connections at a given moment. But your download speed is also influenced by the ISP, as I described above, not mention the fact that some ISPs do traffic shaping, specially on p2p traffic.

 

[moshkid213]

Generally you will be capped. The thing is that these sites serve how many people and how many connections at once. The point is that even a site like this which has its own dedicated host still has a Server Center that it comes out from. As such there is at most 4 GB connection lines to serve all uploads, downloads and connections for all sites that are at that server center. Some have more, like Microsoft, some have less.

Servers like Microsoft's show it even better for HTTP downloads cause i can show you proof of it. I can go download a file, say XP Mode, from their HTTP site and get roughly 250Mb/s. I can then use the Microsoft File Transfer Manager, which is like a FTP, and get the same exact file but at around 1MB/s down.

So yes everything on a HTTP server is capped. I can tell you this from personal experience from getting things from HTTP versus FTP not only from Microsoft but from my personal server as well.

Generally speaking all HTTP downloads are capped for the very reasons i have stated. To serve a file download will hurt the loading of a site to many other connections. Simple as that. Cap the HTTP Downloads, better serve the public who wants to view the site rather than the 1 person who wants to download a file.

Your local node is most likely your cap, unless its in a big city somewhere. Usually they're unable to keep up with bandwidth needs.