Karen wrote:

Hello,

Can someone help us here - I'm trying to figure out why our DSL has always
been slower--not just slower, but MUCH MUCH slower--than the advertised
potential speed and why getting the 2x faster package didn't improve things
much if at all. I don't have unrealistic expectations and I know that how
fast you download depends on a lot of things and I know what band*width*
means and that some servers are slower, etc.

I have a D-Link 614+ which is capable of 100 Mbps. Am I wrong for thinking
that it should transfer 100 megabytes per second in ideal conditions? I
know it's hard to have ideal conditions in reality because how fast you
download depends on the servers you're downloading from and many other
things. Signal strength is always excellent.

The data transfer speed is not determined by the ethernet speed; 10 Mbps ethernet is faster than any DSL.

So why do all of these bandwidth testing sites show the same slow
performance? I'm in Germany, and I use speedmeter.de and other sites that
are in Germany; it's not like I'm using bandwidth tests in places too far
away to give an accurate result.

Bandwidth testing sites are not very accurate; the speed may be limited by things other than your DSL.

DH has a new Pentium 4, 3.0 GHz system with FBS 800 and 2 GB DDR RAM, if
that is any help. So, I wouldn't think that the slowness is for lack of a
fast machine, or?

You don't need a fast processor. I had DSL with a 266 Mhz Pentium 2 that worked very well.

I need help in figuring out why DSL isn't faster. I was excited when
T-DSL-2000 was finally available in our area, so I'd like to know how to
take advantage of the speed, because something doesn't seem to be working
right.

Typical results from speedmeter.de:
Download speed: 46.3 KByte/sec. That's also about what we got with T-DSL
1000 with an advertised max speed of 1024 kbit/s.
We have T-DSL 2000 now and there's NO improvement and the advertised max
speed is 2048 kbit/s

The best way to test download speed is to download 2 or 3 large files (from different servers) at the same time and use a utility that will display the speed, or measure the time that it takes for the files to download. If you download a single file it is likely that the speed will be limited by the server and not your DSL connection.

Is this a hardware problem?

It could be a problem with your telephone line. If the line is poor or you are too far from the telco the speed will be reduced.

Thanks!

K.

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Mike Walsh
West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S.A.