Well, your download speeds are averaged speeds
calculated over a specific period of time. If you are using
Road Runner service, you can do a bandwidth test and it
will calculate the bandwidth of your service to somewhere
between 500 and 1500Kb/sec. This is because this
calculation is based on the amount of time it took to
download a specific file and then the numbers are
extrapolated to calculate a "perfect world" scenario of
your top reachable speed. Accurate by the standards of
your ISP, but not applicable to your actual download
speeds.Downloads (especially with Torrent, LimeWire, Aquisistion,
Carracho, Hotline, or any other peer-to-peer download)
are based on the speeds of all parties uploading and
downloading those files. With a bandwidth of 1.5Mb on a
DSL line, you can expect your average maximum
throughput at any given time to be about 150Kb/sec.
This goes for Cable service also. These services are
shared and bandwith tends to fluctuate. DSL service
fluctuates at the telephone company's CO... and Cable
fluctuates based on the number of active users in-line to
your particular brance of the cable service.
Sufficed to say, if you are rated at 700Kb and are receiving
70Kb/sec on your downloads... that is normal. These
speeds will fluctuate. This is still about 20x faster than
dial-up! Probably in the middle of night your speeds will
peak in the 150-160Kb/sec range when few other users
are online.
Now... If you really want certified speed... T1 lines or
better are isolated connections on a per subscriber basis.
This means that if your line is ratied for guaranteed
speeds and throughput is not shared or degraded based
on the number of other users online in your area.
However, due to costs... this is not really feasible for a
home computer setup for downloading Torrent files.
From my experience, download speeds of 70Kb with
BitTorrent is pretty good. Considering you are using
shared Cable access... those are very good speeds.