ADSL speed

[Prince]

Hello,

why they call ADSL speed with a number that doesnt match the real speed?

I got 2 MBps ADSL and my download rate is 200 KBps?

is it the same with cable?

if availabe, is there any link gives you details about internet connections and how they work and discuss speed matter?

thanks in advance!

[Byte 2.0]

ADSL is different up and download speeds, same with most cable providers.

ADSL means Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line
Asymmetric is where the difference in the up and download speeds.

A 2MBps connection is 2000kbps, so when you do the math is coming out to 250kbps max download. Then with DSL, you lose some speed the farther you are from the CO (cental Office). Then of course there is always some lost in TCP/IP overhead, I bellieve the number to about about 10 percent, it has been a while so that may be a bit high.

If you can maintain 200KBps download, then you are getting a pretty good speed.

Your load is probably only 256kbps or so max.

[glc]

It's bits and Bytes. A 2mbps connection theoretically gives you downloads of 250kBps, subtract 15% or so for TCP/IP and PPPoE overhead. My 768kbps DSL maxes out at 82kBps down.

[Prince]

well,

why they don't say your ADSL is 200Kbps instead of saying 2MBps?

why we don't use the real download rate for naming our connection speed?

[Byte 2.0]

did you expect 2000KBps download?

Actually take 2000kbps devide my 8bits and you get 250KBps max.

They can do this as it is like how hard drives are advertised, like an 80GB hard drive only about 74 meg is useable.

[ktkendall]

Originally Posted by Prince well, why they don't say your ADSL is 200Kbps instead of saying 2MBps? why we don't use the real download rate for naming our connection speed?

Because transfer speed is at the physical layer and therefore is measured in bits per second, it's just a raw number of how many bits per second can be transmitted or recieved as a bit is the smallest unit that can be measured.
Now when your actually downloading a file the smallest useful unit is a byte which is 8 bits therefore what you se displayed in download speed when downloading a file is bytes per second and as mentioned above there is also overhead. If you want to see your actual rate do one of the speed tests like found here:
www.dslreports.com
click over on Tests+Tools on the left side and you'll find a speed test...

[Prince]

I see.

Thanks all