Somebody explain this to me.

[azconnie]

I have the AT&T Fast Acess DLS Xtreme 6.0 Adverstised as 6 Mbps.

http://www.bellsouth.com/consumer/inetsrvcs/promo_dsl.html

I have conducted a test on "speedtest.net" and they say my download is 5.69, and upload is .43.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/835724584.png

At the same time (err... well shortly there after) I did a test download. I use Speed bit DAP for my manager, and it shows my sustained download is ~700 kbps.

Whats going on? I know that there are ~1000 KB per MB, so dose this mean that I am only able to use 1/7 of my download speed?

Help me understand this.

 

[Catsrules]

I was confused for years about this as well, tell I learned out about bits and Bytes.
There are 8 bits of memory in 1 byte of memory.
You can tell what unit is being used by the b in it. If the B is UPPERCASE then it is in the bigger unit Bytes if it is lower case then it is the smaller unit bits.
Speed test and Internet service providers usually displays there speeds in bits, and download programs and most rest of the world displays things in Bytes.
So you will need to convert your Bit in Bytes to match. So if your in bits then your need to divide by 8, and if your in bytes multiply by 8.
So your are 5690 kbps 5690/8=711.25 KBps. right where your should be

 

[azconnie]

I was confused for years about this as well, tell I learned out about bits and Bytes.
There are 8 bits of memory in 1 byte of memory.
You can tell what unit is being used by the b in it. If the B is UPPERCASE then it is in the bigger unit Bytes if it is lower case then it is the smaller unit bits.
Speed test and Internet service providers usually displays there speeds in bits, and download programs and most rest of the world displays things in Bytes.
So you will need to convert your Bit in Bytes to match. So if your in bits then your need to divide by 8, and if your in bytes multiply by 8.
So your are 5690 kbps 5690/8=711.25 KBps. right where your should be

That makes sense, thanks. I had wondered about the lower case b thing.

 

[azconnie]

Best answer selected by azconnie.