Internet Connection Speeds - Can Anyone Explain To Me?

[Wentworth]

I'm getting fed up with my CAT Telecom connection. I have 3/1 Mbps. This apparently is supposed to mean that I get 3 Mega Bips Per Second download and 1 Mega Bip upload. I use Google Chrome as a browser, which I find so much better than the snail pace of IE. I don't know if the supposed speed I have is any good but it generally seems to be alright for most of what I do.

Now then, I can't tell my Bytes from my Bips. Could someone explain to me what the relationship is to the different terms eg 100 cm = 1 metre? I see company trucks with advertised deals such as 3 MB, does that mean Mega Bip or Mega Byte or what? I'm not even sure if I've got the words spelt correctly.

[Steele404]

Firstly it's Bits, not bips...

Secondly, read the fine prints... when they advertise 3Mbps, it means you get a connection established between yourself and the ISP (Internet service provide provider) at that speed. But the speed between them and overseas is a whole differently story.

Let me make you understand, if you try to download files that are stored in "True Internet" (Thai based) servers, you will get maximum speed as advertised, because the connection speed between CAT and True is extremely high. However, if you try to download files from the States, your speeds are slower, because their speeds with US servers are slower and are shared with other people like you.

Well it also depends on other factors, time of day? Middle of the day means more people sharing the connection = slower

Overseas issues? Issues like the major Earthquake in Taiwan that struck last year killed the underwater cable connection slowing down national information superhighway.

[paulfr]

A bit [ b ] is one unit of information ........ in the binary byte 10101010 .... any one of the 1's or 0's.

A Byte [ B ] is 8 bits of information.

So 3MB is 3 million bytes or 24 million bits.

3 Mb is 3 million bits.

Your download speed is spec'd in megabits per second, Mbps.

So you are getting 3 million bits per second download speed

and 1 million bits per second uploading speed.

Note most information is measured in bytes B

So to download 100MB over a 100Mbps line will take 8+ seconds.

I say 8 plus seconds because in practice, each byte has parity and

error correction bits added to it making it slightly longer to download.

[Steele404]

Oh, and at the advertised 3/1 Mbps, you should get roughly 300 KBytes / second download.

Go check your speed at:

http://speedtest.thaivisa.com/

I did mine and i got 4300 Kbps (=4.3Mbps) download even though my internet plan is 8 MBps

[Supernova]

Now then, I can't tell my Bytes from my Bips. Could someone explain to me what the relationship is to the different terms eg 100 cm = 1 metre? I see company trucks with advertised deals such as 3 MB, does that mean Mega Bip or Mega Byte or what? I'm not even sure if I've got the words spelt correctly.

Let's start off with the basics...

8 bits = 1 byte

1024 Bytes = 1 KB (kilobyte)

1024 Kilobytes = 1 MB (megabyte)

1024 Megabytes = 1 GB (gigabyte)

1024 Gigabytes = 1 TB (Terabyte)

Bandwidth measurement:

Kilobits per second = Kbps

Kilobytes per second = KB/s or KBps

Megabits per second = Mbps

Megabytes per second = MB/s or MBps

http://www.whatsabyte.com/

http://kb.iu.edu/data/ackw.html

http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html

And last but not least, Google is your friend.

[NHJ]

my guess is you're using the CDMA device wich 3MB/1MB is the maximum the hardware can allow however in real life, the bandwith is around 2 MB/sec in download.

quick calculation : 3MB= 3072 kB /8 = 384Kbps this is not including the header for the packets.

[crev]

A bit [ b ] is one unit of information ........ in the binary byte 10101010 .... any one of the 1's or 0's.

A Byte [ B ] is 8 bits of information.

So 3MB is 3 million bytes or 24 million bits.

3 Mb is 3 million bits.

Your download speed is spec'd in megabits per second, Mbps.

So you are getting 3 million bits per second download speed

and 1 million bits per second uploading speed.

Note most information is measured in bytes B

So to download 100MB over a 100Mbps line will take 8+ seconds.

I say 8 plus seconds because in practice, each byte has parity and

error correction bits added to it making it slightly longer to download.

Best answer. I couldn't said it better.

Some people think if they got 3Mbps download connection then they can download a 3MB MP3 song in 1 sec. They got to know MBps is 8 times bigger than Mbps.