Okay, When Downloading Something, Whatever It May Be, What Speed (K/b per second) Does It Go? And What Connection Do You Have?
My Crappy 56k Does About 2 k/b per second... 4 If I'm Lucky. I Have A Friend With ISDN... I Can't Repeat How Fast Their Downloads Go... I'll Cry...

I have cable. It is very nice. As to the downloads... hmmm... about like this.
---done.

[img]graemlins/dropatear.gif[/img] ...

But WHAT Speed :D

My 56k does do a lot higher .....ok not that much... about 4-5 k/sec but yay wireless is coming over here, that means a bandwith lot higher, im excited :D
I'll be looking up facts regarding internet connections so all can see, if only i can find them *peeks under the table and says "hey notes, o notes are you in there"*
Ok found them :
Technology: T1/T3 lines
Promised speed: 256k to 1.5mbit (fractional T1 to T1) (45mbit for T3)
Cost is the main disadvantage of T1 or Fractional T1 lines.. from $300 to $1000 a month for bandwidth, plus more for the physical line from the telco. T1s are data grade lines, which means rules about quality levels, customer service and cost escalation. Speed is guaranteed regardless of distance, and distance is not a factor. T1 can be delivered over fiber as well as copper (4 wire). Install periods for T1 average 20 business days. A "T" is rock-solid and well understood and in common use for mission critical connectivity.

Technology: Cable
Promised speed: 2mbit down, 128-384 up
Cable modems are obviously the broadband alternative to DSL

Technology: High Earth Orbit Satellite
Promised speed: Burst 400k down, ? up (Direct TV). 1.5mbps down, 0.5mbps up (ISKY), 300-2mbit (Tachyon)
The most widely used High Earth Orbit system is Direct TV which is one-way but promising conversion to uplink (w-way) soon, avoiding the modem return path problem with their product. Nevertheless, Direct TV and other geo stationary satellite solutions have a 500ms latency problem that cannot be overcome.
Launching "late 2001", ISKY say one 26" dish can serve 8 computers, at 30 times faster than a 56k modem. They plan to use the 20-30ghz range, spot beams at GEO distance.

Technology: High Speed Fixed Wireless (LMDS)
Promised speed: up to T1 speed
LMDS stands for Local multipoint distribution. This refers to multiple transmitters -- your data reception can shift from transmitter to transmitter, avoiding some of the problems with tall buildings blocking higher speed wireless. LMDS is still in its early days, but single point wireless has been around for a while, and typically offers up to T1 speeds from a high transmission point over an urban area

Technology: Spread Spectrum Wireless
Promised speed: up to 4.0mbps
Spread-spectrum wireless, is point to multi-point RF. A base station is located at a high point. One method has transmitters covering each 30 degrees of the area, beaming data to up to 100 receivers in each segment that are line of site up to above 12 miles. Close range (2 miles or less) can operate at "near line of site". Another implementation is 360 degrees to multiple receivers. Receivers are small, about 10 inch square, 4 inch thick. Not affected by rain or ice, and in the 2.4ghz unregulated spectrum.

Technology: VDSL/FTTC
Promised speed: 50mbit down, ? up
Needs neighborhoods wired up underground with fiber, a stunningly expensive operation

Technology: U-NII Wireless
Promised speed: over 5mbit
U-NII is unlicensed spectrum: higher frequency than LMDS and MMDS. Short range (5km), microwave-like, but low power. Very high speed and point to point.

Technology: Low Earth Orbit Bandwidth
Promised speed: 64mbps down 2mbps up (Teledesic)
Lack of any actual satellites
Iridium was the first and most famous disaster in the LEO field. 2400 baud of data was never going to make it. ICO was another, (now rescued by Craig McCaw). GlobalStar is heading for the same stump, with just 9600 baud. Teledesic originally promised 840 LEO satellites, now down to 288, at a low altitude of 1400kms. Teledesic is backed my His Billness, Craig McCaw, Motorola, Abu Dhabi and Boeing. No announcements yet on the when the first packet might get pinged though.

Technology: Optical over air
Promised speed: 622mbps down, ? up
Terabeam is a technology that uses light to distribute bandwidth to buildings and windows of buildings. The company is not public, and although their website offers a nice Flash intro into the technology, questions remain over the details. How does terrabeam cope with swaying buildings, atmospheric interference (weather?), what is the uplink capacity, how expensive and reliable will the equipment be.

Technology: Hybrid Wireless/Fixed line
Promised speed: 10mbit down, ? up
In Japan the power company is planning short jump wireless solutions from power poll to houses... avoiding the monopoly on last mile (or last 100 feet) copper, they can operate very high speed wireless solutions when the transmitter and receiver are very close and line of sight.

Technology: High altitude transmitters
Fly blimps or pilotless planes over a city to act as a wireless relay for large areas. Raytheon (of patriot missile un-fame) is researching the technology for the pilotless plane version. [Adrian]

Technology: High Speed Mobile Wireless (3G)
So called "3G" high speed cellular data networks are being planned (in the US) or built (in Japan). Europe has got some 2.5G networks up and running. Using WAP and iMode web interfaces, cell phone networks are being upgraded to handle data. Unfortunately, existing US infrastructure is slower than even European GSM, so look for Japan if you wish to see the future

Technology: PowerLine
Promised speed: 10mbit down, ? up
Powerline technologies promise to put data out over the electricity grid, with home based equipment to decode and isolate the data from the high voltages. A Korean company has demonstrated the technology and is showing products based on it. Supposedly being trialled in Texas.

Technology: iBLAST (website)
Promised speed: 4mbit down
Not a broadband alternative, it is still interesting. iBLAST uses spare space in TV signals to push out content.. claimed to be video games, software, e-books, music and so on. Think of this as the 21st century version of videotext (remember the blocky pages of data that got sent and decoded by your TV?).
iBlast is signing up TV stations by the dozen, and is expected to launch "early next year". A decoder will pass the digital data to your PC, where we assume, special software will be on hand to present whatever it is that has got beamed that day.
If they set things up like TiVO (Interestingly, iBlast is using the spectrum the government has reserved for future HDTV use.

The top speed for ADSL lines is around 8 mbit/sec for the download, and 1 mbit/sec for the upload. For SDSL lines the top speed is 2.3 mbit/sec on both the upload and download.
Practically speaking, though, most DSL users are connected at speeds equal or less than 1.5mbit, whether they are on ADSL or SDSL.

I hope that helps a little.

[ 08-25-2002, 05:37 PM: Message edited by: whacky ]

Using the ADSL system I just installed in the office, with every other machine marked "out of order" I was getting a report of 87KB/s, which is pretty good. That was coming off of the ISPs own server, which is about 12 feet from the ADSL modem rack, so normal stuff would be slower. And the files were coming down in 20 seconds tops so the figure woudnt have been that accurate.

LOL me too ;) . Hmm I dunno what speed exactly but yesterday I was downloading stuff, about 10mb, took a minute or so [img]smile.gif[/img]

[img]redface.gif[/img] You Wouldn't Belive My Innocence If You Just Heard What Profanities I Just Shouted At The Screen. Its's So EVIL!! I Need A Better Connection!!

<font color=pink>Dun worry Binky, i have 56k too, and my average is usually 3 kb/s :( </font>

I have ADSL and most of the files i download have the speed of 91 kb/s but it also depend how fast the server you download the file from to, some places with big trafic will sometimes be wery slow. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

I've got DSL and mine averages at 50 to 60 kb/s but like Megabot said it depends where you download the file from.