Bytes

Often when downloading a file from the Internet, you will see either KB or Kb, however they are not the same thing:

1 Kilobyte (KB) = 8 Kilobits (Kb)
1 Megabyte (MB) = 1024 Kilobytes

Kilobits per second vs KiloBytes per second

144 Kbps	144 Kbps	18 KB/s
384 Kbps	384 Kbps	48 KB/s
768 Kbps	768K bps	96 KB/s
1,100 Kbps	1.1 Mbps	138 KB/s
1,500 Kbps	1.5 Mbps	187.5 KB/s
3,000 KBps	3 Mbps	375 KB/s
5,000 Kbps	5 Mbps	635 KB/s
10,000 Kbps	10 Mbps	1250 KB/s

If you have wget, or some download tool that shows bandwidth used, go through the website or ftpsite of your ISP and find the largest file you can download with it. Using traceroute, make sure that host is less then 3 hops away from you. Make sure there is no other traffic coming in, or leaving your network while you are trying these tests. At the end of the download, it should tell you your average bandwidth speed. In my example, I'm using teksavvy.com and I found their windows setup tool, which was sure to be bloated. Now I ran three wget tests:

$ wget http://www.teksavvy.com/downloads/TekSavvyAM.exe
--14:32:36--  http://www.teksavvy.com/downloads/TekSavvyAM.exe
          => `TekSavvyAM.exe'
Resolving www.teksavvy.com... 206.248.154.253
Connecting to www.teksavvy.com[206.248.154.253]:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 5,135,855 [application/octet-stream]

100%[====================================>] 5,135,855     96.20K/s    ETA 00:00

14:33:29 (94.94 KB/s) - `TekSavvyAM.exe' saved [5135855/5135855]

2nd try results:

14:38:56 (90.83 KB/s) - `TekSavvyAM.exe' saved [5135855/5135855]

3rd try results:

14:43:44 (91.69 KB/s) - `TekSavvyAM.exe' saved [5135855/5135855]

Now to get my average (scale 2 to get 2 decimal places):

$ echo "scale=2; (94.94 + 90.83 + 91.69) / 3" | bc
92.48

which when I use the table up top, I'm getting less then 768kilobit speeds, yet I'm paying for 3Mbps speeds. To be proper, I will also use 3 online bandwidth test results to confirm my findings:

Bandwidth Place In my case: 434.2 kilobits

C|Net In my case: 885.2 Kbps

toastnet In my case: 973 Kb

As you can see, all three external resources confirm I am getting less then 1Mbps. I've done this test every day for one week, and each time I've got at least two classes of bandwidth slower then I'm paying for as per the above table, time to email my ISP my findings!

Also see byte.

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There are also online sites that will help test your bandwidth, for example SpeedTest.