Is 57kb/sec a good download speed?

[Energenie]

Is 57kb/sec a good download speed? I've got a 500kbps cable modem through Charter and the highest I've got on average is 57kb/sec according to the download screen in IE 5.5 Am I not looking at the right numbers?? TIA

 

[Hoober]

Energenie --

Does it say 57kbps, or does it say 57Kbps. Big difference. It'll let me answer the question, too.

 

[Dyngoe]

Like he said, there's a big difference. But, if you want to test it, go to www.dslreports.com That will answer all your questions.
As Always,
D

 

[bex0rs]

Unless he has a hax0r3d version of IE, the download window reports throughput in KB/s. And yes, 57KB/s is very good for a 500kb/s connection.

~bex0rs

 

[Energenie]

I checked it's 57KB/sec, but I thought that both ways meant kilo bytes per second??

 

[bdcrisp]

kbps = kiloBITS
Kbps = kiloBytes

 

[PliotronX]

57KBYTE/sec = 456Kbit/sec

Generally, any results over 80% of your connection's advertised speed are considered very good. You are getting what you're paying for

 

[Chatterjee]

try speedtest.net

-S

 

[JackMDS]

Guys the K means Kilo (x1000) and it is always Capital.

The difference is in the B, capital B=Byte, b=bit

1Byte=8bits. 57KB/sec=456Kb/sec.

If your service is 500Kb/sec. taking into consideration the overhead Download a File at a speed of 57KB/sec is very good.

 

[Energenie]

Hey thanks all for the info

 

[gogeeta13]

as i found out with my friends cable, try download accelerator, that will push the max limit of your line!

 

[GundamF91]

Your cable modem's only 500 kbps??? That's way too slow for cable connections. When I first read your post, I thought of 500KB/s, the speed of my @home cable modem speed.

U should look around to see if you can find something better.

 

[travws]

Energenie, i feel your pain/excitement. I set up my cable modem the first month it was available in my town. Going from dial-up to cable is great (i'm assuming that's what you did). But i have cable down, phone up...so it isn't as fast as it could be. My lowest speed (down) is 250 and highest is about 600. I d/l from about 35kb/s to 60kb/s. That's just for a comparison.

So your d/l speed is in line with your connection speed. But, like gogeeta13 said, use download accelerator (DAP) for your d/l's. With that i get d/l speeds of over a 100...and routinely 60-80kbs/s.

 

[TonitosWay]

Actually, Jack needs to do his research a little more. According to the Metric system, the "k" or "kilo" prefix is always lowercase, but most published reports capitalize it.

A Byte is represented by 'B' and a bit by 'b' but in the IT field lowercase "k" can be used to describe decimal kilobits, and capital "K" can be used for binary kilobytes.

 

[spidey07]

pretty funny.

i'll stir up to caldren by saying that big K = 1024 and metric k = 1000. then again i could be totally wrong. When speaking bandwidth however it is referring to metric k but is generally capitalized (correctly or not). When talking bytes you referr to them as KB, or 1024 bytes.

bwahahah

 

[JackMDS]

Interesting point Spidy. I am going to try to check it. K=Kilo=x1000 is what always was. I thing that Kbytes was adopted by computer writers.

Let see what I find.

 

[DieselMan]

Your 57 kilobytes/sec download speed is good for your service (if it is indeed rated at 500 kbps); HOWEVER, this is very low compared to the normal cable modem service speed people can get. I've used cable modems at different locations (upstate NY - Time Warner, Huntington NY - Cablevision, and Queens NY - Time Warner), and I get anywhere between 70 kilobytes/sec to 300 kilobytes/sec, with the mean/average being around 100-120 kilobytes/sec. Of course, this is assuming you are accessing non-congested sites!

 

[JackMDS]

Spide, and TonitosWay you are right!

Never too old to learn, that was issued by the IEEE, many years after I graduated.

kilobyte

In decimal systems, kilo stands for 1,000, but in binary systems, a kilo is 1,024 (2 to the 10th power). Technically, therefore, a kilobyte is 1,024 bytes, but it is often used loosely as a synonym for 1,000 bytes. For example, a computer that has 256K main memory can store approximately 256,000 bytes (or characters) in memory at one time.

A megabyte is 2 to the 20th power (approximately 1 million) and a gigabyte is 2 to the 30th power (approximately 1 billion).

In computer literature, kilobyte is usually abbreviated as K or Kb. To distinguish between a decimal K (1,000) and a binary K (1,024), the IEEE has suggested following the convention of using a small k for a decimal kilo and a capital K for a binary kilo, but this convention is by no means strictly followed.

Quote from:

http://www.pcwebopedia.com/TERM/k/kilobyte.html

 

[spidey07]

that is what is so wild JACK,



<< metric k but is generally capitalized (correctly or not). When talking bytes you referr to them as KB, or 1024 bytes. >>



kilo in computer terms is 2^10, but when talking bandwidth it is alway base10. K=10^3, M=10^6 same as metric system.

please somebody call me wrong but I thought all metric abbreviations >1 are capitalized. Those <1 are lower case m=milli 10^-3, mu=micro 10^-6, n=nano 10^-9, so on.
K=Kilo 10^3
M=Mega 10^6
G=Giga 10^9
T=Tera 10^12

sorry, just being a geek again.

 

[Smurfwow]

for your connection, yes.
in general, no.