Max Download Speeds

[Radicool]

To clarify: Mbits = megabits
MB = Megabytes. 8 times greater than Mbits.

Hybrid fibre-coaxial cable networks running at up to 30 Mbit/s. HFC Cable network in Melbourne,
which will provide speeds of up to 100 Mbit/s, providing the city with the nation's fastest internet (2009).

Fibre Optics: 100Gbits/sec

I live in Australia with an ADSL 2+ connection. Apparently the cap of download speed if 20 Mbits/sec with
this connection. Given I had these Hybrid fibre-coaxial cables, I could potentially get 30 Mbits/sec. I know
I do not have fibre optics running to my house.

30 Mbits/sec can only give a max of 3.75MB/sec (30 divided by 8).

My brother is boasting about download speeds of 20 MB/sec - 35 MB/sec. I keep telling him this is not possible,
but he's reluctant to agree as his Steam account claims to download at these high yet seemingly impossible speeds.

Aware that different servers can only upload at certain speeds regardless of your hardware potential, depending
on traffic and their resources. So seeing the 30 Mbits/sec is not likely, yet alone the 25-30MB/sec my brother
talks about.

I just came here so somebody can confirm what I'm talking about. There is no way in hell my brother is downloading
at 25 MB/sec and Steam is reporting very inaccurate data, and my brother should shutup. lol.

 

[Dr Super Good]

It could be steam verifying files. As it is not downloading much it works at disk speed.

I live in Australia with an ADSL 2+ connection. Apparently the cap of download speed if 20 Mbits/sec with
this connection. Given I had these Hybrid fibre-coaxial cables, I could potentially get 30 Mbits/sec. I know
I do not have fibre optics running to my house.

ADSL speed is limited by connection quality. As they use rather rubbish telephone cables they suffer a lot of signal loss. In fact the cables act as a low pass filter which means high frequencies suffer huge loss. The further you are away from the telephone exchange (where they generate the signals) then the stronger the lines filter high frequencies and so the high frequency signal to noise ratio decreases. As data transmission is related to signal to noise ratio then that means that you will get lower speeds the further you are away from the exchange.

How ADSL obtains such high speeds is usually by having the exchange right on the street (fibre to the curb). Such services are called fibre-optic broad band. Conventional broadband, like mine, can only obtain 6-8 Mbit/sec if you are lucky.

This only applies to ADSL which involves telephone lines. If you are using Cable then the transmission rates are considerably higher as the wiring is considerably better that that used by telephone lines. 20 MB/second is probably quite possible on a good cable connection.

 

[saphiree]

Also, never trust steam measurements

 

[Radicool]

Alrighty, thanks for the replies. Now he's being quiet

 

[Magtheridon96]

Steam sometimes reports 550KB/s download speeds when I'm pretty sure my cap is 256KB/s and I never got anything higher than 216KB/s.

The algorithm that measures the speed is failing miserably.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Like I said, it probably measures speed that the game is built. As data may be arriving compressed or already be present from a pre-download then it will be higher than actual download rates.