Tom's Hardware > Forum > General Networking > Network General Discussions > why is my download speed so slow if i have DSL?
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caytos   11-14-2006 at 02:55:17 AM

i got my speed from http://myspeed.visualware.com/ and it says i have a download speed of 128 kb/s..however...every time i try downloading an application or program...my download speed never goes over 10 kb/s...i never have any problems while surfin..or even making VOIP calls...but it always slows down when downloading something.....WHY?...

i use firefox btw..

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evongugg   11-14-2006 at 01:18:51 PM
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Some people confuse Kilobits with Kilobytes. 1 Kilobyte is 8 Kilobits.
I don't know if this applies to you personally, but I just wanted to put that out.

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Caine775   11-14-2006 at 09:31:36 PM
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Your download speed sounds about right, should be alittle faster, but that may depend on the site.

Years ago when I had ISDN, it was 128k, I would top out at 17kps.

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jjw   11-15-2006 at 02:18:47 AM
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There are lots of reasons for slow downloads. With DSL your ISP should be giving you your rated speed to their central office. Also it is possible that your ISP is overbooked in the connection to the WWW. Additionally anywhere from your ISP to the content provider could be bottlenecked.

As for firefox and IE show download speeds in Kilobytes/sec not kilobits/sec. 8 bits per byte as noted above.

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caytos   11-15-2006 at 05:11:35 PM
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o..ok so my speed is rated at 128 Kb/s (which is kilobits..right..) meaning its actually 16 KB/s .... and i usually get about 10 KB/s downloads in firefox...meaning everything is alright??...that blows..i always thought that the ISP provided DSL at 128 KB/s and not Kb/s ...

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Iceblue   11-15-2006 at 05:46:35 PM
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Depends on your service, but I was not aware of anyone offering 128Kbps DSL. That's just ~2x dialup. If that is what you are getting, I hope it is cheap. More typical would be 1Mbps (or 128KB/s).

You should check with your provider to see what speed you are supposed to be getting.

Or, run this. It reports speed in Kbps (lower case "b" = bits; upper case "B" = bytes, but you probably knew that.)

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