View source for 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

{| border="1" cellpadding="2"
|+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]], [[fetch]] 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. At the end of the download, it should tell you you're average bandwidth speed. In my example, I'm using teksavvy 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:

[http://www.bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/ Bandwidth Place] In my case: 434.2 kilobits

[http://reviews.cnet.com/7004-7254_7-0.html C|Net] In my case: 885.2 Kbps

[http://performance.toast.net 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!