AT&T... why can't I reach my promised bandwidth?

moskiter

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Hey... I have 3mbps/512kbps connection from AT&T and I am wondering why I can't reach these speeds... The best what I can reach is 2.53 mbps/352kbps using torrents, websites, ftp downloads/uploads..... Why is that?

PS:

3mbps/512kbps = 366 KB/s / 62.5 KB/s
mine = 310 KB/s / 43 KB/s
 
If you ever get your promised speeds you're lucky. With DSL your speed is determined by how close you are to the local hub, and what your neighbors are doing.

With how close you are to your speed, you can't get much better.
 
There is always something in the background going on that will suck up bandwidth too. Even if its the middle of the night when everyone is asleep, you still won't get to 100% of whats available. So sit back, relax and just go with it :)

until there is something seriously wrong of course...
 
The advertised speed is 3 Megabits per second. A byte is 8 bits. So the advertised speed is 375 Kilobytes per second. And 512 Mb/s = 64 MB/s
 
3mbps/512kbps = 366 KB/s / 62.5 KB/s
mine = 310 KB/s / 43 KB/s

Your upset that you are that close? You have to think about the speed that is coming from where you are downloading things from too. They might have a slower connection. Also, there is no way you will ever get your max speed, it just doesn't happen because of all the switches/routers/etc your connection goes through when it heads out of your house.
 
All sorts of factors can contribute to this - latency, packet collision, noise on the line and contention ratios are just a few of them. As mentioned above, any hardware such as switches/gateways may also be bottlenecking your connection.

You can go away and look all those terms up if you want to - but in short as others have said - count yourself lucky you're getting that close to the advertised speed, it'll never be bang on and quite honestly that's one of the closest matches I've seen. Some companies will quote you a speed that's many many times faster than you actually get... that's what you need to look out for.
 
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