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I have a few queries about downloads, moreover the times quoted for download.

I know it's nit-picking but I thought I should bring up:

- Patch 5 is quoted to take 2m 45s, however this is not true. A more appropriate estimation will be to instead of using 512kbps as a guide use something like 300 - on ADSL you get two channels for upload and download, usually different amounts of the 512kb of bandwidth are allocated for each.

- You never get speeds like 512kbps anyway. More like 30 - 50

- Don't quote me on this but I thought that speeds were measured in kilobits (as opposed to bytes), and there are 8 bits ot a byte so 512kbits = 64kilobytes / sec, which would explain why I can't download 20 meg files in no time at all [edit] more info here http://www.xo.com/products/smallgrowing/internet/dsl/kilobits.html

PS if it turns out you've done all this correctly please forgive me, my brain isn't in gear today

Well I have 512kb ADSL and just timed download and it took exactly 2 minutes 40 seconds. This is faster than estimated and pretty good as I also downloaded it over a wireless connection to my laptop!

It's an estimation. Who expects estimates to be spot on target?

There a slight amount of leway allowed for in the estimates (i.e. they're typically higher than the actual rate). At the end of the day it's an overall "hell, shall I cancel this download and do it later or leave it going" indicator. Nothing more.

Cheers,

Rich

I know it was nit-picking but I was just surprised how high the figures were (I downloaded it over a 576kbps ADSL line over a wireless connection to my PC, and it took 8 mins).

You should see the estimates given if you use my URLDownload plug-in - depending on the file it can range from 2 minutes to 3 seconds difference...

the estimates given are always on the optimum time you can hope to have...

general calculation is along the lines of,

(BPS/FILESIZE*8)/60=TIME IN SECONDS

this will oftenly be more than the estimation simply because more often than not connection will waver to less, mainly due to CPU commitments on your system not being enough to handle your current connection - although this doesn't apply to Hardware Modems, more and more people use Broadband now which isn't Hardware controlled but Software leaving everyone to have high CPU demands again.

and you individual ADSL setup won't be taken into account when calculating speeds ... i have one friend on AT&T who has a single 3Mbit line and another on Netzero who has 4x128kbit (512kb) lines - different companies have different mandates and technology.

the TGC server is quicker than most i've tried recently with no cap rate on how fast you can download, the server itself is probably on a multiple OC connection because it took me 12seconds to get both the demo & updates.

-- -- --

try to remember everything conserning time no matter what your doing is really just an optimistic estimation - you calculate everything on the fastest it can technically go, from that you get the estimate. Even a 350Mbit OC line can have days when it downloads at 2.5kb/s or less ... just depends on if there is a hop system that is slowing everything, because very few connections will ever be peer-to-peer on the net. Therein lies the problem that you could lag even though your connection is fine and TGCs might be fine - but one hop in the centre is being fussy can kill the entire connection speed.