Uhh, based on the test that duffer has run, we’ve already determined that he’s on a 4 or 5 Mbps connection, which is quite reasonable. (It’s what I have on my cable connection here in California).
sniperfang T1 is a notation specific to the telephone industry. It is used to refer to a way of packaging 24 voice channels to give 1.5 mbit/s. It does not mean much in the context of a cable modem.
I don’t want to belabor the issue here. I do have one more question.
Can someone explain to me, like I’m a 5 year old, the exact difference of 1 megabyte, and 1 megabit and how far off they are? I just now timed a download. 12.4 MB file took a fraction over 13 seconds. (About 40 minutes of mp3 audio). That comes out to just under 1MB/sec. What the hell am I missing here? Does 40 minutes of audio = 12.4 megabytes or 12.4 megabits? I’m more confused now than when I began.
And the DAP sounds exactly like what he was talking about. I’ll have to ask him tomorrow. Though if there’s any chance of spyware I assume he’s talking about a hybrid version of it.
1 megabyte is exactly 8 times bigger than 1 megabit. MP3 is not a fixed bitrate format, so 40 minutes of MP3 audio could be either 12.4 megabytes or 8 times smaller (with the associated significant reduction of quality) 12.4 megabits. When people list file sizes 99.9% of the time it is in megabytes. When a consumer level application reports transfer speed, it is typically in megabytes/kilobytes a second. When an internet connection, or a piece of network equipment is rated, it is typically rated in megabits. 1.5 Megabit DSL, 8 Megabit cable, 100 Megabit LAN, etc.
The typical abbreviation for a megabyte per second of speed is MBps, the typical abbreviation for megabit per second is Mbps (difference in capitalization), so it’s easy to get confused.
When most people say megabit/megabyte in terms of file size or network transfer rates, they are usually referring to a unit called mebibit/mebibyte. Which is 2^20 bits/bytes respectively. There’s 8 bits in a byte, so a mebibyte is still 8 times bigger than a mebibit. A “proper” megabit/megabyte would be a slightly smaller 10^6 bits/bytes, and the word is typically only used by Hard Drive manufacturers to infalte the number of “Gigabytes” the HD has.
One thing I saw with my provider (Comcast) was that they upgraded the data rate on my line without even saying anything. I subscribed for my cable internet service 3 years ago and paid for 1.5 megabits/sec service which was standard at the time. A couple of months ago, I found that my (relatively old by that point) cable modem wouldn’t hold a connection. Comcast came and replaced the modem and suddenly I got 5 megabits/sec service too. They vaguely said that my original modem couldn’t handle a change that they made.
I got the impression that they upgrade line speeds sometimes on their own. Maybe the service is too spotty at this point to really advertise it.
It is most certainly NOT true that your 5Mbps service is shared with 30-50 other people on your local node. While the total bandwidth certainly IS shared, that total is FAR more than merely 5Mbps. Don’t believe the DSL propaganda crap. (sorry for all the annoying emphasis)
Standard usage is to use powers of 2 for memory (megabyte = 2^20 bytes) and powers of 10 for communications links (megabit = 10^6 bits). Communications engineering normally deals with bits or symbols per second, not bytes or words.
Really? So 100BASETX is actually 95 mebibits per second?
Yes.
Sorry, gazpacho, but thats not true. The term ‘T1’ is used to define capacity, not the type of data. T1 (or DS1, they’re basically the same damn thing) lines can either be used to carry 24 lines of voice, or 1.544 mbps of Data. The term T1, therefore is also synonymously with either 24 voice lines, or with 1.544 mbps. T1 lines can be terminated into a cable modem (provided it supports T1 and above), or routers.
Cite, Cite, Cite
From your first cite.
From your second cite.
That sounds pretty much like what I said 24 voice lines combined. All phone stuff no cable stuff.