DSL Question

[FutureMagOwner]

yeah i got a dsl line had it for overa year and someoen mentioned some speed that tehy d/l at with their dsl and its much faster than mine... mine d/l's stuff at about 60 kb/s on good servers and im wondering is that average low or fast(i doubt its fast, compared to modems its faster but not dsl from what i can tell).

anyway im wondering if its going slow is there a reason(possible bag config?) and what do i do to fix it

also im talking about d/l's without serfing or any bejazz like that

[Hexis]

One thing you have to remember is that when downloading your speeds are reported in kBytes/second. So your 60kB/s is about 600kbits/s. I would guess that you are in Qwest land where 640kb/s down and 256kb/s up is the standard option. If that's the case there is nothing you can do to increase that speed short of buying a faster line. To make you feel a lil better a 56k modem is 56kbit/s or 7kbyte/s. You also have a lower latency connecton, that helps too.

[FutureMagOwner]

my dsl says it goes at 100mbp/s but only d/l's at 60kbs(im talking files off line) so im confused

[Jonneh]

[FutureMagOwner]

why on earth would they cap of my rates when i pay for alot faster than what i seem to be getting right now

[Hexis]

The 100Mbps is the LAN (Local Area Network) Speed, not the DSL speed.

[FutureMagOwner]

meee so confused!!!!*head explodes into little pies!*

[Blennidae]

Here is a website that has a lot of DSL info. You can probably find a lot of answers there.

http://www.dslreports.com/

They have a speed check thing on there somewhere, and I believe it gives you suggestions on what you can do to improve your settings.

[alkafluence]

Re: DSL Question

Originally posted by FutureMagOwner
yeah i got a dsl line had it for overa year and someoen mentioned some speed that tehy d/l at with their dsl and its much faster than mine... mine d/l's stuff at about 60 kb/s on good servers and im wondering is that average low or fast(i doubt its fast, compared to modems its faster but not dsl from what i can tell).

anyway im wondering if its going slow is there a reason(possible bag config?) and what do i do to fix it

also im talking about d/l's without serfing or any bejazz like that

Remember, not all DSL is created equal. There are different varieties, and different download speeds for each variety depending on how much you pay.

So what is the variety and rated speed that you pay for?

[FutureMagOwner]

i dont pay it my mom does and she got the high end of the middle sorta dealie

[FrAuStY]

Not to say I kmnow everything about connections but I do know a lot more than the average computer user. When dealing with internet connections you have to remember. You can only download as fast as the info makes it to your C.O. (Central Office for your phone company). If there's any latency issues between servers you're talking to (requesting info from) then you will get lower transfer rates as the ECC (Error correction control) has to step in and make sure you don't miss any information or get duplicate data. Your speed mainly depends on how far away you are from your C.O. Think about it like this. Lets say someone lives 1 block away from the C.O. His latency to that point would be very low..probably .001 seconds, He in turn would be able to download extremely fast since the data has less distance to travel once it leaves the fiberoptic side of the web. A user living 12 miles away from the C.O. would probably have a latency of about .040 seconds. Doen't seem like much of a difference, but when transferring data it can be a BIG difference. On most servers trasnfering via HTTP (clicking links to download a file that doesn't start an FTP client, then I'll gett like 150k/s tops. If I use an FTP client like cute ftp or Ace FTP.. I'll get 600-800k from the same server. FTP is File Transfer Protocol. This allows the server to send a much larger packet instead of sending chunks that are 100k in size it may send chunks at 500K a second sometimes even larger. This may sound like gibberish but my fathers a network engineer for Cisco (big network company) and I have built and admin'd our own VPN (virtual private network) at home. This is also hooked up to a router and NAT'd (Network Address Translation) so all pc's on the network can access my ADSL through the router. So..I'm not making this up..its things I've inherited from having a VERY intelligent father. Anyway... with your problem,

Sounds to me like they're running PPPoE (Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet) These can only go 100mbit/s which would translate out to about 80Kbps actual transfer. Some DSL providers (like mine..bellsouth) Use PPPoA (Point-to-Point Protocol over ATM) which is much faster...more like 10MBytes/sec even though you'll never see that speed... their local server (which you connect to) will/can receive info from the fiber side at 10 Mbyte/sec then you will retrieve it from them at like 600k/s. Moral of the story...

Find a provider that uses PPPoA and you will be very happy. I know I am. I get faster download rates then some cable subscribers...good thing with mine..its always this fast..bad thing with cable...its only fast when no ones on
wanna read more about PPPoE? Click <a href=http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/794/pppoe_arch.html>here</a>.
wanna read more about PPPoA? Click <a href=http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/794/pppoa_arch.html>here</a>.

[Hexis]

FrAuStY I don't mean to be disrespectful, but you are way off base on most of those details.

Fisrt, DSL speed has to do with signal quality between the subscriber and the DSLAM (DSL Mux). Some DSLAMs are deployed remotly, so the distance to the CO can have very little to do with the line quality.

Second, different POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) deployments use different kinds of wire. So you could be 2 blocks from the CO and test out with a vrey low signal quality. However, in most cases close to the CO allows you to get higher speed service.

Now at least in Qwest land, being able to get faster DSL only means you can choose to subscribe to it. The common speed line people go for is 640/256. 640kbit/s down, 256kbit/s up. There is a 256/256 offering that's cheaper, and faster offerings for those who want to spend more. I live about 2 blocks from the CO (one of the reasons I moved here). I have a 1024/960 line. However, if I had a 640/256 line I would get no better speed than somone who was at the limits of the 640/256 signal. Those speeds are limited at the DSLAM.

BTW a user living 12 miles away from a DSLAM would have IDSL at best. 60,000 feet is a long way in DSL terms.

Latency has very little to do with bandwitdh. In transfer rate terms even less. A correclty configured machine will be fine if the latency is consistant.

100mbit/s translates to about 10000kByte/s transfer rates, not 80kByte/s. Now when you are going over dsl you can me limited to all kinds of numbers depending on many factors.


FutureMagOwner If you are interested in more details please tell us as much as you can about your DSL. Anyone telling you details about your connection without having that info is just blindly guessing.

[FrAuStY]

As I said...I not saying I know everything, but I do know some. I don't know why I wrote 80k I meant 800k after the data had been processed.. (8 data bits..1 parity etc) Anway...I'd like to learn more about it as I plan on going to school for networking Admin/ORacle DBA What exactly is your line of work?

I didn't know Qwest had different plans around here theres only one.. ADSL running 1.5Mbit/256k, and the C.O. refernce was because we had a line run when the house was built that was 11.6 miles from the C.O. (we used some trace proggy) We were getting real slow rates.. 50k down and like 20k up. We called th ephone company and they offered to replace the line from our house to the entrance of the neighorhood. (Lines were about14 yrs old) Now that I think about it.. you're more right than I and I don't know why this didn't dawn on me until now.. they ran data grade this time and the previous was only voice. Anyway...just trying to add some info.. I learned something myself.

[Hexis]

You are going the wrong way with that conversion, and you are still off by an order of mangitude.

100mbit = 12.5mbyte, networks don't use a dedicated parity bit. You are confusing memory technology (ECC, parity) for networks. There is some error checking, but it doesn't use the ECC algorithm. (ECC = Error Checking and Correcting BTW).

I'm a, you guessed it, Network Geek. Among others I have worked for an ISP. Gives me a pretty good background on DSL.

[FrAuStY]

/me opens mouth... inserts foot