Gaming Bandwidth question

[granville]

I'm not too familiar with how internet speed works, but I have a few questions and maybe some of you tech savvy people can give me some idea of what's going on.

First of all, I have Bellsouth/ATT DSL. I don't know how fast it's SUPPOSED to clock at but I can give you my speed test results from speedtest.net:

Download- 3005kbps
Upload- 307kbps

That speed is while the internet just sits idle with no pages or downloads going. Now, the weird thing is when I start downloading a torrent file. The torrent downloads at about 30kbps and uploads at about 15kbps (and yes, I've had far faster ones). Now, the funny thing about this is when I clock using speedtest WHILE I download that torrent. Here's my results on speedtest while downloading at 30kbps:

Download- 197kbps
Upload- 38kbps

What a huge decrease in speed considering I'm downloading at just a few less kilobytes! Why does the internet go at such a dramatically slower rate considering I'm just downloading at a slow speed? I do notice it a lot while searching too. The speed decrease is very noticeable.

I'm using a firewall called Comodo BTW if that makes any difference.

 

[Jiggah]

First, make sure you note that the test is running in kilobits not kilobytes. Secondly, torrenting can be really taxing on bandwidth because you're also attempting to connect to a ton of people and a ton of people are trying to connect to you. So, limiting the number of connection when torrenting is a good idea. It's also possible that AT&T is throttling your connection because you use torrents. You can try to encrypt the torrents to bypass that measure.

 

[Lee79]

No you are getting confused if your ISP says you have 3005kbps it means you have a 3mb connection. but when you download stuff it is in Kb/s which is different to kbps this might explain it better http://lyberty.com/encyc/articles/kb_kilobytes.html. 197Kb/s is about write for a 3oo5Kbps/3mb connection.

 

[Diablo1123]

I think the speedtest kb are differnt then the kb that torrents use.
Example:

is my speedtest, but my download max on torrent is 30kb/s ish.

 

[Lee79]

I have a 20mb cable connection and the most i get on uttorent is 400Kb/s on speed test i get

 

[granville]

First, make sure you note that the test is running in kilobits not kilobytes. Secondly, torrenting can be really taxing on bandwidth because you're also attempting to connect to a ton of people and a ton of people are trying to connect to you. So, limiting the number of connection when torrenting is a good idea. It's also possible that AT&T is throttling your connection because you use torrents. You can try to encrypt the torrents to bypass that measure.

That makes a lot of sense. And I always get kilobytes and bits confused. I know how torrents work and that the speed depends on the people who are uploading it. I was just confused at how badly it slowed down my OTHER internet uses. Connecting to hundreds of people at once seems to make the most sense. Thanks!

 

[Jiggah]

A 3 Mbit connection should translate to about 300 Kb/s download. For example, my results show 2555 kb/s down with 432 kb/s up. The equivalent of that is 319.4 Kb/s down and 54 Kb/s up.

I can max my connection on torrenting, but it makes my internet crawl so I limit the download speed to half and half for up.

 

[granville]

Then I guess a good question would be is speedtest.net measuring in kilobytes or kilobits?

EDIT: I think it's bits since that's what the middles says.

So, speedtest clocks in my speed at about 300kilobytes per second. I'm pretty sure I have a faster connection though since I've downloaded torrents at above 400 before.

 

[p1ngpong]

I have a 20mb cable connection and the most i get on uttorent is 400Kb/s on speed test i get

Just thought I would add to that, I think your ISP's are throttling your torrents. I have a 24mb connection, not that much faster then yours, and the fastest Ive seen a torrent coming in is 2.0mb/s. A typically well seeded film lets say 700mb in size from the top 100 off a popular torrent site usually comes in 20 minutes. When I had rapidshare I would get a 7gig 360 iso within an hour.

 

[MicShadow]

You should check if your ISP throttles BT. Could be useful to know. Try this test
M-Lab BitTorrent Test

 

[granville]

That site says they are overloaded at the moment, but thanks! I'll test it later.