How fast can cable go?

[Token Joe]

I mean in the real world. I just got a cable modem and I have been hitting anywhere from 2.5 meg a sec. down to 500, I am guesing probably traffic issues? What is normal and is there anything I can do to tweak for more speed?

Thanks,

Joe

 

[Paulson]

It's all based upon the cable system you have and how many users it has.

You're experiencing the fast/slower situation as more users bog down the system at peak times...

I've seen it go as fast as 5mb a sec...

 

[Muadib]

When I first got it, I was getting 7mb/sec, true heaven. Now I average around 2mb/sec which is not bad, but no where near what I was getting before last xmas. Bottom line is more people sharing your node, the slower you will get. However, checkout dslreports, because there's plenty of good info. They have a page where you can see what people on your isp are getting, not to mention many tweaks.

 

[RichieZ]

about 5mbs/s, 4mbs all the time

 

[randomlinh]

2 megs/sec... damn... i'm just staring and only get roung 1-1.5 megaBITS/sec at best... down to like 200-400 around peak times (and cable is NEW here... i'm guessing they haven't finished installing cable for more nodes.. i hope anyway).

 

[frankroh]

I usually get anywhere from 200K to 3000K based on time of the day. Fastest rate I've hit was when downloading LINUX iso from Mandrake at one in the morning: Hit over 4000K and downloaded 1.3Gig in just over 30 minutes!

Cable Internet connectivity is just through a big ass proxy so traffic makes a significant difference in speed. I've had cable for almost 3 years now and I've seen degredation in speed as well as more customers sign up in my area.

I'm just glad AT&T @home is still in business unlike some DSL companies that have tanked.

 

[NIelkc]

Man, I hate all you guys My cablemodem is limited to 512 Kb so that would be about 50KB p/s. And I pay $50.00 a month for that. The only good thing is that there is never a problem with to many users. I saw "Tweaks" is there a way to break there block? Or somthing like that? Just make it go faster

 

[Mapidus]

It is dependent on the cable system and the modem. I used to get about 150KBps max on and old non-docsis modem. With my new RCA Docsis modem I have seen 400KBps downloads.

Also, how come people report speed in kbps? Is it for better comparison to DSL and phone modems? I find KBps better since most other things on a computer system are reported in bytes, such as file size and download speeds from programs. Also I guess i am too lazy to multiply by 8.

 

[PolPot]

With Cox RoadRunner in Oklahoma City, I get 4-5Mb/s on a very good day, but 3Mb/s at a minimum at any given time. Uploads are painful -- it seems to be limited to 32KB/s (256Kb/s).

 

[Gladwin]

The reason people talk in bits per second is just habit. For example,
you've heard of 10baseT? That is 10 Megabits/sec, baseband, twisted pair.
So, since cable internet is just regular ethernet, the max anyone should
be seeing is 10 Mbps.

There is also 100BaseT, and Gigafast also.

 

[frankroh]

C'mon, don't you remember the good ol' days when you used to dial up to BBS boards on 200 bits per second modems????

It was a lot cooler and sounded faster to say 200bps than 25Bps.

Man, did I just age myself or what?!

 

[Jalva]

With my cox@home, it's between 2000-3700kbps downstream and 90-256kbps upstream.