Help me understand how download speeds work?

[Icegoten]

Ok I have Road Runner Cable and thats our ISP. We have a Modem and router. Cable goes into the modem from the jack in the wall, then ethernet goes into modem to computer as well as router to 2nd computer/xbox/ps3. So right now I have the ethernet cable going to the 2nd computer which is the computer I'm on right now. When I download anything no matter what it is the max download speed I reach is 90 kB/s. Its been like that ever since we upgraded from dial-up and is always the same when we download torrents, programs, updates, etc.

Now what I don't understand is this. Last night I went to sleep and kept my computer on to download a game that took overnight to download. I turned my monitor off and went to bed. When I woke up this morning I turned on the monitor and it was downloading with speeds of over 150 kB/s! I was shocked at what I saw and went to move the mouse so I could move the download window so I could check the weather for the day. I was moving the mouse for about 5 seconds and it was like it was frozen. 10 seconds later my mouse started moving but as soon as I did that the download speed dropped down to 20 kB/s and then rose back up to 90 kB/s!

I don't understand what happened so could someone explain it to me? Plenty of times I have been on all hours of the day downloading thing so I doubt it has anything to do with peak hours and stuff like that because why would it drop just because I moved my mouse?

 

[zerocool84]

Have you called Time Warner to see why your speeds are that low?

 

[RoloMather]

Software limiter? 90KB/s is low for cable.

 

[Icegoten]

I thought that speed was normal and what do you mean by software limiter? Is there a way I can speed it up because I tried things like download accelerators but they don't do anything at all for me.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

Cable is shared connection, is it not? If you're online at high usage times and have to share, it will affect download speeds.

 

[BladeVenom]

What do you get with http://www.speedtest.net/

 

[Icegoten]

Well thats the thing Im online all the time and no matter what time of the day it is I get the same speed.

Also I'm still waiting for one of my downloads to finish so in about 15 minutes I can post my speedtest results. I don't want to get false reports because I'm currently downloading something else using that connection speed.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

And we are to assume you've done the basics of checking to make sure you don't have anything running in the background that uses network bandwidth? Automatic updaters, P2P clients, and the like?

A simple ctrl-alt-delete when you don't think you're downloading, then a look at the network tab will show if bandwidth is being used up. If it is, then you've got stuff running in the background using your bandwidth on your PC.

Does it speed up if you unplug the consoles? They can do background downloading as well, even when they are powered off.

You've actually got wires, yes? A wireless connection would certainly kill your bandwidth.

And you're not downloading to a network drive or anything else that might cause very slow writes?

 

[Icegoten]

I don't have anything else running on my computer that would use network bandwidth. When I listed my consoles I was just naming what I use interchangablely. I can just unplug my ethernet into my xbox if i want to play online or my ps3 if i want to play that online or my pc if i want to play that online.

The first PC that I have is off. I could even get the cable going directly into the modem and the modem straight to the computer but that is the way it was set up years ago before I had all these other things I could hook it up to and I know back then even my max download speeds were 90 kB/s



My results and it did pick the closest one to my location.

 

[mindcycle]

With a 1 Mb/s internet connection you can expect to get around 128 kilobytes per second down. That can of course vary due to traffic on a cable line. Sounds like that's probably what you get from your provider and it's showing up a little less on that test due to traffic.

1 Mb/s isn't super slow by any means, but it's not that fast of a connection either in broadband terms.

 

[Icegoten]

Ok well that does help me to understand it better. Someday when I move I can then look for a better ISP for a faster connection.