Thread: Download speed + conversion rates

My dad just upgraded our connect speed to 3 Megabit. I'm in a discussion with him right now.

I say a 3 Megabit connection would result in a 300 kB/sec download speed (from my experiance from multiple ISPs, ive had listed 1.5 Mb which seemingly resulted in a 150 KB DL speed. I just wanted to get others input on this and see if someone who is Byte/bit/mega stuff savy to maybe post the actual math behind this.

I've been downloading files for 10 years and I know what a companies listed download speed in Mbs converts to kB/s for actual downloads. Someone help me out here lol.

If your plan is 3Mbps so your speed should be
3*1024/8=384KB/s
ISP usually use Mbps cos it'll make their plan look nice with a high number

could you explain the 1024 number for me?

nvm looked it up..1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes

edit: By the way thanks...Me and my dad are in agreement now..thats what he was trying to say in the first place. We theoretically should be able to get about 350 KB/s But we cannot get over 250, These guys at this ISP are fucking morons and are about to get some knowledge droped on em by a nuke plant operator lol.

Careful on the swearing, quick way to get an infraction - dropping F bombs.

When an ISP advertises a connection speed they usually say 3 Mbps which is not the same thing as 3 MBps. The difference is the capitalization and what it stands for. The lower case(Mbps) stands for Megabits per second and the uppercase stands for Megabytes per second.

What the ISP advertises is the achievable speed in theory, but in realtime the actual speed you can attain will be usually less than the theoritical speed. Since its 3Mbps advertised you will be getting speeds close around 350KB/s in realtime,besides it also depends on the bandwidth and number of users using the ISP at that instant.

Also there is probably some documentation or fine print somewhere that would explain the difference in the advertised speed and what customers actually receive. Try asking your ISP.

I have a 50/50 connection but the highest up/down speed i seem to get is a little over 5mbps.
I wish it was a little faster.