[GRLUG] An ISP question

[Bob Kline]

I've played these games over the years.
When I lived in NJ four years ago,  our
ISP goofed,  and uncapped our service.
For many months we had the full DOCSYS
limit:   10Mbps down,  and 800 Kbps up.
I know this because I could upload large
files of known size to the ISP's customer
web space,  and coming down,  the gnu.org
site from MIT seemed to have no cap.  There
too I could download large packages of known
size,  and the speed was always in the 9.6
to 9.8 Mbps range.

Hog heaven until the ISP discovered its
mistake.  As I mentioned,  my web hosting
service might have its own upload limit -
I will check in to this.  But even gnu.org does
not seem to provide even 8Mbps rates any
more,  so testing high download rates is a
problem.

Or of course it could be Comcast,  as
mentioned in a previous note.  If so,  why
they would sell an 8Mbps service, and
cap it at a rate lower than that, would be
a story worth knowing about.  It could be
a mistake,  and it could be something else.

Others with Comcast might want to see
what they are actually getting.  Using
FTP,  a file of known size,  and a watch,
is the most fundamental way to do it.

Re 1.5Mbps T1,  having the symmetric
bandwidth has its own appeal.   Too bad T1
lines never really came down much in
price.  But then,  symmetric bandwidth is
always expensive,  no matter what it's
based on.

     -Bob


On 8/11/06, David Pembrook <david at pembrook.net> wrote:
>
>  At that speed you may be able to see how fast other people's pipes are as
> well. I know companies that host their customers on a single T1 (1.5/1.5).
> This is perfectly fine if they aren't over utilizing their pipe and don't
> handle a lot downloads.
>
>  If you want to see your single connection best speed, try downloading a
> Linux ISO from a close by EDU ftp server. Unless things have changed, they
> don't tend to cap them. I don't see over 500k/sec down on my dsl so I can't
> test it.
>
>  Dave
>
>
>  Michael Mol wrote:
>  On 8/10/06, Bob Kline <bob.kline at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>  I have the Comcast 8M / 800K package.
> Independent of the time of day, I get
> something like 6Mbps down from some
> sites, and typically 640Kbps up to my
> web hosting site, using FTP.
>
> Now, if I use two or more FTP jobs to
> transfer data to/from my web hosting site
> I invariably get the full 8M / 800K. I
>
> 'm just curious why this would be. I'm
> temped to say it's not Comcast, since
> I do get the full rates under certain
> circumstances. Why my web hosting
> site would limit a single stream to 640Kbps
> up, if it is, I have no idea - I will contact them
> and ask.
>
> In the mean time, any thoughts here, or
> similar experiences?
>
>  Would "certan circumstances" be such where the data transfer consisted
> of multiple data streams? (Like download accelerators and p2p
> clients?)
>
> Comcast might have a cap on the throughput of individual TCP streams.
> Seems likely, especially if they expect customers to have more than
> one simultaneous user to a particular account. It would certainly make
> for an easy way to keep one user from hogging all the bandwidth, and
> thus reduces complaint calls about "My internet is slow!"
>
>
>
>
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