Internet speed help

Kylefisher98

Commendable
Sep 14, 2016
8
0
1,510
I currently have at&t internet with a stock Motorola modem at&t installed for me. I'm paying for 18mb speed. When I download, I'm only getting 1.5 MB- 2.5 MB download speed. Would getting a router to hook to the modem increase speed? Or what should I do? Help would be appreciated.
 
Solution
18 Mbps does not equal 18 MB/s they are different measurements.

A Byte is eight bits. So a bit rate like 18Mbps = 2.25 MB/s. So your numbers are accurate.

You can blame marketing and tradition for using that metric. Modems were always in baud (bits per second) 9600 baud = 1200 Bytes/sec or 56Kbps = 7KB/s (though more like 5 KB/s in practice)

Since most internet connections actually do end up on the phone network they still use 64Kbps (56Kbps) as the smallest unit. ISDN connection was a pair of phone lines, T1 is a bundle of 24 line, and it goes up from there to T5. Also the Optical Carrier standard which is another step up. With the top OC-768 handling a staggering 40Gbps or 5GB/s

Eximo

Titan
Ambassador
18 Mbps does not equal 18 MB/s they are different measurements.

A Byte is eight bits. So a bit rate like 18Mbps = 2.25 MB/s. So your numbers are accurate.

You can blame marketing and tradition for using that metric. Modems were always in baud (bits per second) 9600 baud = 1200 Bytes/sec or 56Kbps = 7KB/s (though more like 5 KB/s in practice)

Since most internet connections actually do end up on the phone network they still use 64Kbps (56Kbps) as the smallest unit. ISDN connection was a pair of phone lines, T1 is a bundle of 24 line, and it goes up from there to T5. Also the Optical Carrier standard which is another step up. With the top OC-768 handling a staggering 40Gbps or 5GB/s
 
Solution