# Bandwidth speed test vs actual bandwidth, why the difference?



## sandlotje89 (Feb 17, 2009)

I've been on a couple of different ISPs in a couple of different cities and have never understood this:  Why is it that a bandwidth speed test (Speedtest for example) will indicate a much higher download potential than what we ever see?  My test on that site claims 9000KB/s download rate, and yet the most that I can get on average is 1MB (1000KB) per second.  I've NEVER even seen anything above 1.2MB/s, no matter the ISP or the server that I'm downloading from.  

Is it that all of these ISPs coincidentally have the bandwidth capped at roughly the same amount?  If so, that would be really odd.  I am at a college right now and actual download speeds are roughly the same on both our wireless server and our local area connection.  I'm using Port 80, and it is open.  I used to have the understanding that I could get download speeds of numbers like 2-3MB/s on school networks, but I have yet to see any such thing.  How do I get closer to reaching the numbers taht these bandwidth speed tests are showing?


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## Fear_Of_Dreams (Feb 17, 2009)

you have to take into account the number of people on those download servers, and yes alot of those servers will be capped.  The speakeasy speed test will show you pretty much what your connection is capable of, but then you have to also consider the distance of those servers and the type of connections they are using etc.....its all just numbers really and theres alot that factors in.

like my connection shows around 13mbps but iv never reached that on any download, the most iv gotten is like 2mbps.


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## PabloTeK (Feb 17, 2009)

Are you taking into account the different measurements? Speedtest & ISP's use bits per second while download agents/programs use bytes per second. Because there are 8 bits to a byte, 1.2 megabytes a second sounds right.


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## WeatherMan (Feb 17, 2009)

You're answer is above, PabloTeK was correct


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## Motoxrdude (Feb 17, 2009)

PabloTeK said:


> Are you taking into account the different measurements? Speedtest & ISP's use bits per second while download agents/programs use bytes per second. Because there are 8 bits to a byte, 1.2 megabytes a second sounds right.



Yuep. People don't take into account that ISPs measure in bits, while everyone else in the world messuress in bytes. Sneaky little bastards


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## Gooberman (Feb 22, 2009)

lol, some guy from a game was like i have 16 Mb/s Download speed(thinking that it was Megabyte) and i was like no you have 2 MB/s!


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