Please can someone help explain BB speeds?

iluvjohnsarg

Hi all

I was just comtemplating moving from Orange to Sky! lol They're probably just as bad as each other. I'm due a mobile upgrade with Orange, but they want to charge £127 for the phone I've chosen. I have quite a good mobile package with them that includes free BB, but the upgrade fee is a joke when they want to charge so much for a phone they offer free to new customers.

I just did one of those speed tests on my Orange BB and it says ...

Download Speed 6699 kbps (837kB/s)
Upload Speed 512 kbps (64kB/s)

I think they Orange quote up to 6Mbps for my BB and I'm less than 200 metres from the exchange (I have to confess I don't know how many kpbs there are in a Mbps )

Is anyone able to explain how these figures add up? I don't do much downloading and have never been bothered with online gaming, but it has been remarkably slow this week, even on this site.

Thanks!

penrhyn

Hi, there are 1000 kilo bits per second in 1 mega bit persecond.

Your current download is 6.699Megabits per sec.
Your current upload is 0.512Megabits per sec.

You will be synchronising with the exchange slightly faster than this.
If you can log into your router look for the router statistics.

iluvjohnsarg

penrhyn wrote: »

Hi, there are 1000 kilo bits per second in 1 mega bit persecond.

Your current download is 6.699Megabits per sec.
Your current upload is 0.512Megabits per sec.

You will be synchronising with the exchange slightly faster than this.
If you can log into your router look for the router statistics.

Thanks penrhyn

I think what you're saying is the download figure is OK (even though I just checked and they said up to 8MBPS not 6MBPS), but the upload is slow?!

Would the download figure normally be significantly higher than the upload one? I'd of thought it would be similar, but then I'm not an expert as you can see.

Phantom_Flan_Flinger

iluvjohnsarg wrote: »

Would the download figure normally be significantly higher than the upload one? I'd of thought it would be similar, but then I'm not an expert as you can see.

Yes it would. The A in ADSL stands for asymmetric, which basically means that you don't get the same download/upload speed.
The upload speed you're getting is about right.

penrhyn

No what you have is quite normal, the A in ADSL stands for asymetrical, in other words the download speed will always be greater than the upload speed.
As you say ISPs quote their service as being up to a given speed, in fact even with a perfect line you would never get 8mbps, this is because of overheads in the data stream.
My router synchronises with the exchange at just over 8mbps, but the best download I get is around 7mbps, see below

Its entirely possible that you could achieve faster speeds but you would have to post your router statistics to be sure.
http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.php