Hi there. Not sure if this is the right forum for this question. I just installed a DSL modem, with a service that is supposed to provide over 700M speed, but all I'm getting is a 100M connection. I called my ISP's tech support, and was told that it is a speed limit imposed by my computer, and they wouldn't give me more information than that. Does anyone know anything about this? Is there a setting I can change? In Windows or in BIOS? Thank you.

100Mbps is the most you can get - based on available technology. I am not aware of any home connections that really exceed it.

i_XpUser

DSL isn't like cable in that "distance" makes a huge difference. If you live far away from your ISP's central office, chances are you won't even come close to reaching their advertised speeds.

There are other factors that will limit your overall speed (condition of copper lines, type of DSL hardware, incorrect modem settings, etc.), but your computer specs. tells me that your system should be able to handle a good DSL speed. Most systems really don't need any extra tweaking in the BIOS.

Tech support from any ISP will be quick to blame your computer since they're too lazy to figure out the real problem, or take them blame themselves at their end. But again, "distance" from your ISP's central office has always been one of the biggest drawbacks in speed from any DSL provider. How far away do you live from the CO?

~ Sarah C.

~~~~~~~
eMachines H2602
1.9ghz Athlon XP 2600+
80gb HDD Primary
40gb HDD Secondary
Windows XP Pro w/ SP2
512mb DDR PC2700

Lenoir, You probably noticed a message in your system tray about being connected at 100Mbps, right? Network cards in your computer are commonly set to transmit data at either 10Mbps or 100Mbps. This data travels through an Ethernet cable and is received by whatever device it's connected to: another computer, a cable or DSL modem, a router, or whatever. In a nutshell, it's the maximum speed of your LAN (Local Area Network).

Keep in mind, that this is NOT the speed of your Internet connection or your WAN (Wide Area Network).

More info in the thread at the link below.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/i...

Tufenuf

The connection is more reliant on the distance from the phone company's closest switch (not Central Office) to where your modem is. First check with your provider (or access your account on their webpage) and see what speed you're actually paying for. Some companies (i.e. Verizon) offer different connection speeds, more speed = higher monthly payment.

Life is more painless for those who are brainless.

I only live a couple miles away from the CO.

I just did a test download from a broadband site, and it said:

Actual data bytes sent: 1142173
Actual Data Packets: 789
Max packet sent (MTU): 1492
Max packet recd (MTU): 1492
Retransmitted packets: 82
sacks you sent: 313
pushed data pkts: 45
Data transmit time: 12.912 secs
Transfer rate: 76172 bytes/sec
transfer rate: 609 kbits/sec
transfer efficiency 89%

Well, the first transfer rate looks good, but the network icon still says "connected at 100.0 Mbps. Is it lying? I feel like such a newbie. This is confusing.

OK, thank you tufenuf and everyone. I'm leaning towards believing the system tray icon is throwing me off, going by what I read. It is important to know if I'm getting the speed I'm paying for, though. My ISP has a monopoly here, so I have to pay $45 for the roughly 700 M I signed up for.

First off you can't be correct when you write "supposed to provide over 700M ".

Surely you mean 700KB !!!

here's an example to think about:
Your car has a speedometer that usually goes up to 120mph [assuming US]

Do you go 120mph on the freeway? Hopefully not.

Consider your speedometer your nic at 100mb and the freeway is your internet connection. Yes the onramp to the freeway is 100mb but the freeway is only 700kb

this is confirmed by your test!
"transfer rate: 609 kbits/sec
transfer efficiency 89%"

You will never see 100% utilization and you will never see 700kb. That is just the way it is. Just like you buy a 120gig hard drive and find out its actually 117gig. They round up.

You are just fine and have no problem.

Give a person a fish, they eat for a day. Suggest they internet search and they learn a skill for a lifetime.

609kbps is actually pretty good considering how far you are from the nearest switch. If I'm not mistaken, the max distance that ISP's are capable of delivering decent DSL service within your switch-location is 18,000ft (approx. 3.5 miles), with very noticeable drop-off's in speed at around 12,000ft (approx. 2.27 miles).

But, as everyone else has also stated, you'll never reach the 700kbps speed as advertised by your ISP. At 609kbps, you're doing just fine.
Also, are you connecting your DSL modem to your PC via 10/100 ethernet or a USB cable? Connecting via an ethernet cable will always give you faster and more reliable performance than with a USB cable.

~ Sarah C.

~~~~~~~
eMachines H2602
1.9ghz Athlon XP 2600+
80gb HDD Primary
40gb HDD Secondary
Windows XP Pro w/ SP2
512mb DDR PC2700

LOL, yes I meant 700KB, not MB, wanderer. Sorry, I'm a little frazzled today. You're definitely not catching me at my best. *points to pretty self-built modded pc* See? I have skills sometimes, lol :) Sarah, I have the ethernet connection, so whew on that! Thanks you guys, for putting my mind at ease and saving me hours of searching for obscure BIOS settings that don't exist. And hey, things DO seem speedy over here!

I'd like to chip in with all the fine comments given so far.

The problem is indeed with your assumption of the language or terminology & not so much the ISP or your machine's limitation. Out of curiosity though, I'd like to know how your ISP worded your service contract, since I can't imagine them promoting 700Mbps (700mb/s) downstream or upstream on a flyer or anywhere else & not get their phones completely jammed within 30 seconds...........LOL

Verizon FiOS doesn't even advertise anything remotely within the vicinity of that speed. For their residential customers, I don't think they offer beyond 30Mbps/5Mbps - down & up at this time & subscribers for that package I'd like to assume constitute an intangible part of their high-speed customer base.

The only thing that would make any sense is that you are on a package similar to the lowest tier (768Kbps - down) offer from AT&T that cost $14.99, unfortunately the monopoly in your area shouldn't make it hard to understand why you are paying $45.00 for it. But it sorta bites that with 10 bucks less than you are paying monthly now, you'd be eligible for connection with an almost 10x faster downstream in many other localities ;-(

Despite the explanations given the other contributors, it is imperative to not further confuse your ~768Kbps down with the actual download speed to expect or that you see as you continually download data from the web. What to expect should be about ~96KB/s (768/8) & that is not putting any other variables into consideration.

Example - I supposedly pay for a 3Mbps (3072kb/s) down with 512kb/s connection, but in reality the connection has always only been about 83% close to those figures, but it's close enough to for me not to raise any eyebrow with my ISP - all things considered & good enough for what I do with the internet. My CN homepage links to a good speed test webpage, you may or may not find it useful.

Good luck!

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

Yea, 768KB is a common speed, actually pretty fast for DSL. "connected at 100.0 Mbps. Is it lying"? If you are typing that correctly then that is 100Megabits/sec. which equals 1/8th of that or 12.5MB/sec. That is still too much for DSL or even Cable. About the fastest I even DL anything is from the MSoft site and that runs about 1.5MB/sec. and that is only sometimes.

The package I got said 768K/256K for $45. Their next package up touts 1.5MB/512K for $99. My tray icon is saying exactly:

Local Area Connection
Speed: 100.0 Mbps

This is even the first I've heard of megabits. But I think I get it now. I see decimals and my eyes glaze, but I'm OK.

Yeah, Sabertooth, the local ISP really has us where they want us, and it's frustrating to pay this when I see ads for what other people have available. Monopolies never bring out the good in a company. I guess what happened is that there used to be Verizon in the general Northeast area, but they sold to Fairpoint, and they're the only supplier now. A lot of areas also have massive dead zones. One section of a city will have broadband, while the rest won't. Cable and other DSL support ends a couple miles on either side of me. Only 8 miles from the capital of NY and this is what's available. Pffffft!

Look on the bright side - eh!

At least you are not one of the folks in such areas where dial-up it the only on-ramp to the internet highway ;-)

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

Whoa!!... $99 a month for 1.5mbs?!? That's totally insaaaaane! My DSL subscription for 1.5mbs/896k is only $22 a month from Qwest.

Companies that monopolize people for the sake of huge $$$ profits should just burn down to the ground. How shameful of them.

~ Sarah C.

~~~~~~~
eMachines H2602
1.9ghz Athlon XP 2600+
80gb HDD Primary
40gb HDD Secondary
Windows XP Pro w/ SP2
512mb DDR PC2700

Lenoir

8 bits make a byte. 1024bytes = 1 KB, 1024 KB = 1 MB and so on. A byte is what it takes to write a single ASCII character. Bits are either 0s or 1s. By having 8 bit positions in a byte there are enough combinations to get all the characters, plus. That is why 8. Everything that follows must be multiples of 8. If I go something wrong here someone can feel free to jump in.

Lenoir

You're comparing apples to oranges.
You are NOT being ripped off!

The following is repeating some of what others have said, but I hope this tacks the pieces together better for you.

"Local Area Connection
Speed: 100.0 Mbps"

The speed you see in your task bar is the speed of the connection of your network card to a port in another network device - your DSL modem, or your router, or your combo router/DSL modem - and it is rated in megaBITS per second, not megaBYTES per second.

Network devices are rated in megaBITS per second, not megaBYTES per second like most other computer related devices.
There are 8 bits to a byte, and some data bandwidth is not available to the user because it is used for hand shaking and error correction and other protocols, so with that "overhead" that results in the data transfer rate maximum in megaBTYES being about 1/10 of the network adapter rating in megaBITS is e.g. a 100mbps network adapter transferring data no faster than about 10 megabytes per second.

That speed you're seeing in the taskbar does not change and is NOT the speed of the internet connection.

The internet speed varies depending on how good the connection to a particular web site is, and can only be shown when the internet is actually being used to transfer data. You get something closer to the actual max speed at a particular time by going to web sites that have internet speed tests, and if you have a chioce of several servers, try several and use one from then on that tends to give you better results.
E.g. I use Toast.net's speed tests, and the server Toast.net (CA) on the show all hosts page. That server works well for me - a different one may work well for you.
http://performance.toast.net/

From your various posts:

- it appears you bought yourself a 768kb/sec max DSL speed connection, NOT a ~700 megabyte per second connection. There is no such thing as an internet speed that fast!
The speed on the web is rated in kiloBYTES per second, or megaBYTES per second, by the way. I'm on a 1.5 megabytes ps DSL connection myself.

- from your response 5, you were getting a 609kbps connection at that time, or 79.3% of 768kbps - that's not bad at all!
If you go to other web sites to test your speed, you may get better results yet.
.....

You can improve your internet speeds noticably by using a utility that tweaks your default Windows TCP settings (which are not ideal), including the MTU as quoted in your response 5.

e.g. search for: TCPOptimizer - download it, run it, choose Optimal settings for the network adapter it is connected to. That's it. You only have to run it once, at least until the next time you load Windows fron scratch.

If you would like a utility that can show you what your internet speed is at any time, as it happens, here's a freeware one that can do that - AnalogX's Net Stat Live. You can download it many places, one being here:
http://www.pcplus.co.uk/downloads/i...

Hi There
I have Verizon dsl with a download speed of 3.0
mb down and 768 up.But before i had a issue with
the phone line that comes into he home and it
cut down the speed to a crawl.So if you think
your speed is too slow with all things considered distance from the C O.Have the phone
line tested for resistance t/g r/g and across
the tip and ring.You should not have any x's on
t/g or r/g and very high across the tip and ring.
I work from them so i have seen this happen before with the quality of speed.HTH