Download Speeds Comcast 75 mbps vs. 25 mbps

[sinskipper]

I recently cut the cord with Comcast. My triple play plan had a maximum internet download speed of 75 mbps. I downgraded to a plan that had a maximum of 25 mbps. My typical maximum speeds have dropped from about 2.8 mbps to about 250 kB/s. Does that make sense?

[GaryE]

2.8 MByte/sec is 22.4 Mbit/sec
250 kByte/sec is 1.95 Mbit/sec

The problem with only looking at download speeds within a Torrent client is that your speed downloading torrents is highly variable and there are many variables which effect that speed.  Size of the torrent, age of the torrent, number of seeders, your physical proximity to the other seeders, if you are connectible, how many of the seeders are connectible, etc, etc, etc all play a part as does your maximum theoretical speed.

The first thing I would check would be your maximum theoretical speed.  Try going to a site like speedtest.net and see what your actual maximum upload and download speeds are and then go from there.  Just make sure that everything on your entire home network that might be using Internet bandwidth is turned off before you run the test.

[sinskipper]

Thanks. From an expectation point of view I was not familiar with the difference between bit and byte.

[GaryE]

No problem!  It is a very common mistake!

The ISP's always report speed in bit/sec and most applications report speeds in Byte/sec so it really is very easy to not realize that or forget the difference or whatever!

If you really want you can get Vuze to report the speeds in bit/sec so that you have a better idea about your current speed and how it compares to your theoretical maximum -- that is what I did ;-) .