Speed increase?

Perhaps someone can enlighten me. I am currently on Lite because we are not heavy internet users and I don't want to pay more than I need to for this service. This plan gives me 3Mb/s dl and 256kb/s ul, and my speedtest shows I am indeed getting these speeds on both wired laptop and wireless netbook. However, when downloading from itunes for example, I am not even getting these speeds. A 9Mb song will take a lot longer than 3 seconds to download. I understand that the process will be limited by its slowest component and I never expect to get maximum speed, especially from busy websites.

So, my question is, if I cannot get even 3Mb/s download as it is, what would be the benefit of upgrading to a faster speed plan? And those of you who are comparing your speedtest dl speeds, do you see a noticeable difference in actual web usage?

Thanks

^^^^
You cannot judge by one example. How are other sites you use? There have been times I've downloaded a Linux distro and indeed got close to the rated speed. When you're downloading a 4 GB file, it does make a difference.

PG44 said:

Perhaps someone can enlighten me...

Click to expand...

You're confusing megabytes and megabits. A 3 Mb (megabit) connection will give you 384 kilobytes/second. A 9 MB song on itunes (megabytes) is 9 * 1024 which is 9216 kilobytes, divide that by 384 kb/sec and you get approx. 24 seconds. You cant divide the size of the file in megabytes by your bandwidth directly.

To get your speed throughput in kilobytes/sec , multiply your connection in megabits by 128. So :

3 Mb connection gives 384 kb/s
5 Mb connection gives 640 kb/s
10 Mb gives 1280 kb/s
to remember : you never get that max speed because of transmission errors, data correction, server speeds, bottlenecks at different hubs, etc...

Ah, thank you! Yes, 1B=8b. These are used incorrectly so often I just started reading Mb as MB. That makes upload speeds really bad then

I just have to say that since becoming clear on the whole bit and bytes issue, I am noticing constant confusion and misuse of these terms. I heard a radio add the other day for an ISP offering download speeds of up to 20 Megabytes per second (Wow! sign me up!), and just yesterday Rogers called me to see if I wanted any changes to my services, and the lady described the various download speeds in Megabytes per second. I just had to correct her.
Honestly, while it may be correct in IT terms it is functionally and intuitively out of place to describe internet speeds in bits while file sizes are almost always in Megabytes. I suppose it doesn't matter, since faster is faster, but it just irks me.

metalhawk said:

And it's now official: Extreme is now 15/1, but with a reduced cap of 80GB. Current Extreme users can keep the 95GB cap, but will stay on 10/1 (for the time being. We know how Rogers deals with grandfathering, the Lite package 40GB/2GB cap fiasco being the prime evidence).

Click to expand...

What can we expect? I've got Extreme and prefer the slower speed and larger cap rather than increased speed and reduced cap. Will they eventually force the new cap on existing customers?

That's what happened with grandfathered Lite users months ago.

This thread is about the speed increase at Rogers. Mention of what the Caps are, is acceptable. But, please do not discuss the Caps issue here (how you're disappointed, how it's a ripoff, etc). There are already plenty of threads on that topic. Future posts primarily discussing Caps instead of speed will be deleted.

Does anyone know if the Webstar modems support the higher speeds? Also, is Ultimate available in Ottawa? I tried to find out using My Rogers, but it's like a dog chasing it's tail.

Here's the thread on Rogers Modem requirements.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=123728&highlight=rogers+modem+docsis

Getting 17Mbps on Express package

As the title mentions, I've noticed the last couple of weeks that my download rates are higher than usual. I used to reach 1Mbps on average as download rate but lately reach 1.4Mbps. I just did a speed test with speedtest.net and the speed peaked at 17Mb/s. Before it was around 10Mb/s. The upload speed remains at 512Kbps. I live in Brampton. Does anyone noticed the same? Did Rogers upgrade the download speeds?

I am on Lite and just ran the test. I was getting 3 Mbps download but am now getting closer to 10. Upload unchanged at 250 Mbps.

Waterloo, Home of Research in Motion (Blackberry messenger servers) and University of Waterloo. Either or both might be "sucking bandwidth". Just a thought.

I too have noticed an increase lately, seems it started happening after I upgraded to the new Docsis 3 modem. I have Express and I was getting up to 35Mbit download at one point, with upload being unchanged at .5

Mentioned before: Speedboost. This is a 10 second boost of your download speed at the start of a transfer. It screws up speed tests. To know your real speed, download a large file and see where your speed settles. Speedboost is meant to make browsing faster.

Has now been rolled out here in Baden - suburb of Kitchener-Waterloo. 18Dn .5 Up

I have Express in Guelph ( live near to the Uni if that might make a difference)
My Motorola modem is 7 yrs old and when I got it, living in Toronto I got 7Mbps down and 512K up ( on a basket of speed tests ). Here in G, Rogers upgraded Express to 10Mbps up a couple of years back and I indeed got about 10Mbps down.

Now I notice that most speed tests show between 15 and 17 Mbps down and 512 up with one outlier that shows 5Mbps down.

Same physical modem, no word from Rogers, my online account still shows Express as 10Mbps down.

Downloading a large file, say a Linux distro at about 700Mbytes I do notice that the download counter on Ubuntu shows about 10Mbps overall, about 1.1MBytes per second.

timlocke, Rogers implemented a "speedboost" feature that allows a short burst at higher speed before reverting back to 10 Mbps. This is discussed earlier in this thread.