Testing upload/download bandwidth speeds for verification

[Daniel B. Thurman]

Ed Greshko wrote:
> Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
>   
>> I have been testing my residential ISP/DSL-Landline
>> connections and wanted to make sure that I was getting
>> what I am paying for. Supposedly, one can use the various
>> website based "speed test" tools to determine their upload
>> and download speeds.
>>
>> Are these "speed test" tools credible and can they
>> be trusted?
>>
>> Of the several sites I have tried, they all more or less
>> seemed to be in close agreement with one another in
>> terms of the bandwidth speeds, i.e. my connection
>> speed is quoted at 768KB/s up and 3MB/s down,
>> and the farther away from central, the more reduced
>> is the speeds are.
>>
>> The average speed tools says that I have measured
>> speeds of 720-30 KB/s up and 2.0-5MB/s down.
>>
>> Why is it however, that when downloading software
>> from the various Linux/M$ and other downloads sites
>> I am seeing on average, speeds of 200-320(max) KB/s
>> and never see anything much faster than that?
>>
>> Is this normal?
>>     
> Yes, very normal....
>
> First, the download speed get from any site can only be as high as their
> upload speed.
>   
So, does that mean I am wasting money by going from
768KB/s Up / 768KB/s Down to 768KB/s Up / 3MB/s
Down since I will never obtain download speeds faster
than the Upload limit of 768KB/s ???  The only way to
get more speed is to increase the Upload speeds to be
more closer to the Download speeds which is always
higher?

Perhaps I should downgrade my connection speeds to
768KB/s Up / 768KB/s Down since I cannot get higher
than 768KB/s Up and I am losing $$$ or am I missing
something here?

I wondered why ISPs do not offer matching Up/Down
speeds, so as to snare an ignorant dupe?

> Second, run the web based speed checks from 2 or 3 different sites 
> simultaneously and/or the same site multiple times simultaneously and
> see what the results are then. 
>
> Those two things should shed some light as to why it is normal.
>
> Oh, and third, the software download sites probably also have rate
> limits on each upload (from their point of view) so that everyone gets
> the same level of service.
>
> All of these reasons are the driving force behind the development of
> bittorrent...
>   
>> Has anyone gotten download speeds any faster that
>> what I have reported?
>>
>> What I am trying to determine is if my ISP only shows
>> un-throttled speeds between me & them, but then somehow
>> throttles my bandwidth usage when I am using the Internet,
>> or is it more probable that download speeds are being throttled
>> from the download site itself?
>>
>> Other than by using `speed testers', I have yet to find a download
>> site that pushes out more than 2-300KB/s?
>>
>> I have tried HTTP, FTP & Bittorent and there is very little or no
>> speed improvements as far as I can tell.
>>
>> Just wondering,
>> Dan
>>