A Conversation for The H2G2 Programmers' Corner
Internet Connection Speeds
Rat, who can't remember his way round this bloody thing. Started conversation Jan 19, 2006
I've got some weird connection speeds going on and I was hoping somebody could explain it to me.
My connection is via a LAN. I dont know anything about the LAN other than there's a wire running over the roof tops from our house to the ISP office.
When I download from a site in Bulgaria, I get download speeds of anything from 100-200k/s.
When I download from other sites, this is reduced substantially. To give you a comparison, I tried downloading from various mirrors on soureforge.
Germany gave me 15k/s, Russia gave me 8k/s while US gave me just 4k/s. I understand why downloading from a mirror further away is slower, but it doesnt explain the difference of an order of magnitude, surely (the differences are MUCH bigger than I ever noticed while in the UK where your download speed doesnt seem to be effected very much wherever you're downloading from)?
Also, if I download from a .bg domain thats hosted outside Bulgaria, I download at around 40k/s, wherever it is in the world.
Is there a technical reason for any of this or do I just have the ISP from hell (the second option is surprisingly likely)?
The obvious answer would be to contact the ISP, but my Bulgarian was barely good enough to get them to come out and give me internet, never mind asking them anything about it.
Internet Connection Speeds
Rat, who can't remember his way round this bloody thing. Posted Jan 19, 2006
I forgot to say in the last post that if I'm using linux, my connection speeds are on average 10% faster than on windows too.
Internet Connection Speeds
Traveller in Time Reporting Bugs -o-o- Broken the chain of Pliny -o-o- Hired Posted Jan 19, 2006
Traveller in Time 
trying to find an objective comparison
"There must be something odd with your ethernet card. If I can find a difference in download (just tried a debian mirror) there is no more then one percent between windoze and linux.
Both have a program running to collect FTP packets (each about 1500 bytes) and both request the second next after the last received one. The main difference comes by storing it to disk in my test.
Perhaps your processor has to handle the interrupts for the Network Card in the Windoze version where the Linux box does polling?
Why not go ask your Internet Service Provider if they are just round the corner ? I bet they have impressive tools to measure their bandwith in all directions 
(been near the local Servers more then once)"
Internet Connection Speeds
Peet (the Pedantic Punctuation Policeman, Muse of Lateral Programming Ideas, Eggcups-Spurtle-and-Spoonswinner, BBC Cheese Namer & Zaphodista) Posted Jan 19, 2006
The problem you're seeing isn't really a bug, but rather a deliberate ploy. The Sourceforge mirrors "throttle" the speed of outgoing connections to stop any one person with a fast connection from bringing all the other people using the same mirror to a halt.
Basically, you can only grab data as fast as the site at the other end will let you have it.
As for the different speeds between your Windows and Linux connection, I suspect they are using different numbers for kilobit/megabit. It sounds like one is using 1,000,000 bits per megabit in its calculations while the other is using the more accurate 1,048,576 bits. 
Internet Connection Speeds
Zak T Duck Posted Jan 19, 2006
"Download" speeds will in most situations depend on these and a few other factors:
Your downstream speed (the bigger the better)
Your contention ratio (the lower the better)
The remote location's upstream speed (usually a lot lower than the downstream speed, unless the remote server is connected to the net by SDSL or some other synchronous connection to the Internet. As with downstream, the quicker the better)
The remote location's contention ratio (the lower the better)
The number of servers serving from the remote location
The "popularity" of the server you're downloading from (you may even find your download speeds will vary from server to server in the same location)
The route packets take from the remote location to your location (so the upstream, downstream and contention ratio of all the routers between the two locations).
Some download mirrors also deliberately cripple their free download services to slower speeds, impose queues or both, in order to provide quicker download speeds for their subscription users.
Internet Connection Speeds
Traveller in Time Reporting Bugs -o-o- Broken the chain of Pliny -o-o- Hired Posted Jan 19, 2006
Traveller in Time Bulgarian not in dictionary
They must be able to understand:
*.us 4k/s
*.ru 8k/s
*.de 15k/s
*.bg 200k/s
?
|\
| 
-\__
|________ ?
The answer I can not really imagine however 
"
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Internet Connection Speeds
- 1: Rat, who can't remember his way round this bloody thing. (Jan 19, 2006)
- 2: Rat, who can't remember his way round this bloody thing. (Jan 19, 2006)
- 3: Traveller in Time Reporting Bugs -o-o- Broken the chain of Pliny -o-o- Hired (Jan 19, 2006)
- 4: Peet (the Pedantic Punctuation Policeman, Muse of Lateral Programming Ideas, Eggcups-Spurtle-and-Spoonswinner, BBC Cheese Namer & Zaphodista) (Jan 19, 2006)
- 5: Zak T Duck (Jan 19, 2006)
- 6: Traveller in Time Reporting Bugs -o-o- Broken the chain of Pliny -o-o- Hired (Jan 19, 2006)
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