How Much Does Your Internet Cost?

[Patrick McCarron]

Don't forget that 1.5 Mbit/s is your "sync" rate. It's impossible to get the whole 1.5 Mbit unless they set your sync rate to a number higher than the "advertised rate" due to how DSL works.

Also don't forget the number above is megabits not megabytes. Two commonly confused numbers. There are 8 bits in a byte. So a 11.5 megabits is 0.1875 megabytes, or 192 kilobytes per second.

What download speeds are you getting? Close to 185 kb/s I bet.

 

[ChiefThunder]

Don't forget that 1.5 Mbit/s is your "sync" rate. It's impossible to get the whole 1.5 Mbit unless they set your sync rate to a number higher than the "advertised rate" due to how DSL works.

Also don't forget the number above is megabits not megabytes. Two commonly confused numbers. There are 8 bits in a byte. So a 11.5 megabits is 0.1875 megabytes, or 192 kilobytes per second.

What download speeds are you getting? Close to 185 kb/s I bet.

Yeah, I know people often confuse megabits and megabytes. The latter being the preferred data bit size for a download rate. But noone has that fast a connection, or do they?

Believe it or not, I get a miserable 40 Kilobytes per second on average. Sometimes a little faster or a little slower depending on Net traffic etc. Strangley enough though I am quite happy with it. But it's the old story, you know? You get a much faster internet connection, then you get used to it. Before too long you get used to that previously fast connection and want more. And it goes on and on. I expect I will get cable one day. But for now I am satisfied with my current connection.

I am now able to do alot of things that were previously impossible with my crappy 56k dialup IP. You know what it's like to try and download a 40 or 50 MB file with a connection that maxes out at 5 KB/second? It's agony and just not worth even trying.