question about upgrade to higher DSL speed?

I currently have DSL conection at 4mbp/sec for residential use. I want to upgrade to higher speed because I share internet connection with 2home PC. My ISP told me that I have to upgrade to commercial plan which has 6MB/sec and 3MB /sec.

Are those commercial speed fast enough? How is it translated to Mbp/sec speed?

4Mbps should be plenty fast enough for 2 PCs unless you are both going to be doing on-line gaming or massive file bitTorrent downloads at the same time. I wouldn't upgrade until I tried the 2 PCs with your current service. If you need to upgrade, you can always do it later.

The conversion from MB/sec to Mbps is x8. So your current 4Mbps is 0.5MB/sec. The 6MB/sec you mention would be 48Mbps. Surely your ISP offers something in between 4Mbps and 48Mbps!

I would of thought the same thing, since speeds upwards of 7Mbps in DSL is pretty uncommon ... it is out there, but the distance limitations are significant. However, the OP did specifically ask for the difference between Mbps and MB/sec, so I thought I'd at least answer that question.

I'm sure they do, it was probably a typo it is most likely 6Mbps down/3Mbps up that the ISP is offering.


the commercial service offers 2 rate plans: 6MB/s and 4MB/s.
I do alot of torrent download. I have to search for movies, games, software. ISP told me that I have to switch to a commercial modem. Is there vast difference in residential and commercial modem at all? They look the identical to me. Whenever I use torrent for prolong period, I can't use my browser at all. The browser takes forever to load yahoo homepage. I have to reboot my modem for the speed to stabilize(guessing here) for browser to load a page.That's pretty darn fast for DSL. This is the telephone company, isn't it? Are they using copper twisted pair, or have they run optical fiber throughout their system? What are the distance specs? I'd guess you'd have to be within a mile or so of their switch for that speed over copper twisted pair.

Anyway, to answer your question, yes, there would be asignificant difference in the internal electronics of a 4Mbps residential DSL modem and a 48Mbps commercial DSL modem. They may put them both in the same case design, but that does not mean the internals are the same.