Apple

howsabout trying a download manager so you can leave it to get on with it (Reget) is a decent one I use and they do a free version )

might not up the speed up very much but you can set them up to keep going if it drops the connection, restart if too slow etc - you're not praying that the "save as" box will go t*ts up and you can queue downloads which save's you being there all the time


[Edited by Apple - 6/5/2003 7:28:09 PM]

Mungo

Using BTopenworld Anytime (narrowband), and download speeds are invariably crap. Should this come as any surprise or is there anything I can do to improve?
When I say crap, most downloads start at about my connection speed - usually 44kbps - but soon slow down, and the avergae is usually nearer 5 by the time they've finished. It doesn't seem to matter whose site I'm downloading from.
I'm going to broadband soon, but is there any short term fix?

Da Booga

Downloads of 5k are about right for narrowband. Don't be fooled by the 56k part of the modem spec, i'm not up on the techy details of why (it was explained to me once but I can't remember/didn't fully understand) but you've got nothing to worry about

HTH,

Gareth

john_s

iTrader: (1)

Windows reports the connection speed as (say) 44Kbps (kilobits per second), and the download speed as (say) 5KBps (kilobytes per second), ie the downloads speed will be at most 1/8th of the connection speed (8 bits per byte).

5KBps is therefore a reasonable download speed for a 44Kbps connection.

John.

Mungo

So does that mean a broadband connection will only download at about 50-60kbps?

carl

No, a broadband connexion will download at around 50-60kB/s -- i.e. around 500 kb/s.
b=bit
B=byte (8 bits)

Mungo

*****!
And the penny drops....

Sorry, read the answers too quickly before...

So whyare modem connection speeds about the only thing still quoted in bits? Surely everything else is quoted in bytes, or is this the IT world just trying to confuse us poor innocents?

PaulT00

I think speeds are still quoted in bits for two reasons:

1. that's how it was done historically - in the old days the fastest you could get was a "300 baud" modem, i.e. 300 bits per second. IT people have difficulty coping with change <G>

2. it makes the numbers look bigger for marketing purposes.

Also, even if your connection is running at 44Kbps, that's the raw data rate going up and down the wire, and not just the "payload". Some of that 44Kbps is taken up with the overhead of TCP/IP, basically packet headers etc wrapped around the "real" data you're trying to download.

carl

I'm going to be quite **** here
Whilst "300 baud" is in fact 300 bits/s, baud is actually the number of state transitions per second. Later modulation methods (e.g. QAM) allow multiple bits per state transition, e.g. a 28.8 kbit/s modem might be only 4800 baud.

john_s

iTrader: (1)

I think modem connection speeds are stated in bits per second largely because one transmitted byte generally takes up more than 8 bits, as start, stop, and parity bits can be added to the data bits.

Also, all the stadard communication "bundles" (telephones, networking, etc) are measured in multiples of bits per second.

John.

PaulT00

Yes OK OK. (thinks: there's **** and then theres...) Showing my age... I seem to recall from many years ago being taught that 9600 bps is generally the highest modem speed at which the terms "baud" and "bits per second" are approximately synonymous. And of course with modern modems it's all pretty irrelevant anyway since the actual transfer speed is probably being constantly optimised in response to line conditions.

But there again, you haven't lived until you've done emergency out-of-hours support on an ancient PDP-11/73 over a 300 baud direct dialup connection...