• Why is this here?
• I have a suggestion!

(back)People usually want one thing from their broadband service -- SPEED. This FAQ is here to help you understand what bandwidth is, how to keep track of it, and how to tweak it (more speed = good :)).

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(back)You can submit suggestions for this FAQ here.

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• What's the difference between a kilobit and a kilobyte?
• OC-3? T3? T1? How fast are these?
• What is the maximum speed for ADSL?
• What is the maximum speed for SDSL?
• How fast does a file download at each speed/line?
• Where is the best collection of speed tests?
• What is my top speed?

(back)The Dial-up FAQ has a great explanation for this -- http://www.dslreports.com/faq/3758

http://www.t1shopper.com/tools/calculate/ has some good details as well.

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last modified: 2004-02-20 17:37:25

(back)From http://yocum.org/faqs/bandwidth/:

OC-255						13.21 Gbps
OC-192						10 Gbps 
OC-96						4.976 Gbps 
OC-48, STS-48					2.488 Gbps 
OC-36						1.866 Gbps
OC-24						1.244 Gbps 
OC-18						933.12 Mbps 
OC-12, STS-12					622.08 Mbps 
OC-9						466.56 Mbps 
OC-3, STS-3					155.52 Mbps
CDDI, FDDI, Fast Ethernet, Category 5 cable	100 Mbps
OC-1, STS-1					51.84 Mbps
T-3, DS-3 North America				44.736 Mbps
E-3 Europe					34.368 Mbps 
Category 4 cable				20 Mbps
Token Ring LANs					16 Mbps
Thin Ethernet, category 3 cable, cable modem	10Mbps
E-2 Europe					8.448 Mbps
T-2, DS-2 North America				6.312 Mbps
Standard ADSL downstream			6.144 Mbps
DS-1c						3.152 Mbps
E-1, DS-1 Europe				2.048 Mbps
ADSL, T-1, DS-1 North America			1.544 Mbps
ISDN						128 Kbps
DS-0, pulse code modulation			64 Kbps	
U.S. Robotics x2 modems,			56 Kbps	56flex
56flex, x2 modem communications rate		33.6 Kbps
V.34, Rockwell V.Fast Class modems		28.8 Kbps 
Level 1 cable, minimum cable data speed		20 Kbps
V.32bis modem, V.17 fax				14.4 Kbps
modem speed circa early 1990s			9600 bps
modem speed circa 1980s				2400 bps

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last modified: 2004-01-26 23:37:41

(back)From http://www.dslreports.com/faq/356:
The top speed for ADSL lines is around 8 mbit/sec for the download, and 1 mbit/sec for the upload.

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(back)From http://www.dslreports.com/faq/356:
For SDSL lines the top speed is 2.3 mbit/sec on both the upload and download.

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(back)
Martindale's File Download Time Calculator gives this for lots of bandwidths simultaneously.

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by climbers edited by removed
last modified: 2004-01-29 17:17:24

(back)TestMySpeed.com has tests from all over the United States, as well as the rest of the world, collected in one handy place.

The DSL Reports speedtest page has a good collection as well.

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by climbers edited by removed
last modified: 2004-01-29 17:56:55

(back)When you are networked to the Internet, or to your own network, the bandwidth given is the theoretical maximum. The real world, of course, doesn't work like that. There are many things which affect your actual bandwidth. This is a simple introduction to the basics: Bandwidth

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by climbers edited by removed
last modified: 2005-06-19 21:35:09

• How can I limit bandwidth on one machine?
• Some sites have cool bandwidth graphs. How do I set one up?
• Is there a tool that can show me how much I've downloaded?
• How can I optimize my broadband?

(back)NetLimiter can be used to limit bandwidth, set restrictions per application, and view various statistics.

Shunra Nimbus is another popular application used to do this.

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(back)http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/ has complete instructions on setting this up on your operating system.

Cacti is another popular and useful tool.

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last modified: 2005-12-22 16:25:12

(back)Yes, DUMeter is the most popular application for this.

AnalogX's NetStat Live is another popular monitoring program.

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(back)The DSLR Broadband Tweaks forum can help you with that. Check 'em out!

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• What is MRTG?
• How do I set up MRTG on a Windows machine?
• How do I set up MRTG on a UNIX machine?
• Is my device compatible with MRTG?

(back)This is a perfect example of MRTG. DSLReports graphs incoming and outgoing traffic. This, however, is only one of many things MRTG can do.

More from http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/mrtg.html:
MRTG consists of a Perl script which uses SNMP to read the traffic counters of your routers and a fast C program which logs the traffic data and creates beautiful graphs representing the traffic on the monitored network connection. These graphs are embedded into webpages which can be viewed from any modern Web-browser.

In addition to a detailed daily view, MRTG also creates visual representations of the traffic seen during the last seven days, the last five weeks and the last twelve months. This is possible because MRTG keeps a log of all the data it has pulled from the router. This log is automatically consolidated so that it does not grow over time, but still contains all the relevant data for all the traffic seen over the last two years. This is all performed in an efficient manner. Therefore you can monitor 200 or more network links from any halfway decent UNIX box.

MRTG is not limited to monitoring traffic, though. It is possible to monitor any SNMP variable you choose. You can even use an external program to gather the data which should be monitored via MRTG. People are using MRTG, to monitor things such as System Load, Login Sessions, Modem availability and more. MRTG even allows you to accumulate two or more data sources into a single graph.

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last modified: 2006-01-27 14:55:42

(back)This guide is the best way to start an installation. If you run into issues, feel free to start a thread about it in the forums.

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(back)This page offers a very good walkthrough on setting up MRTG for UNIX.

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(back)MRTG relies on SNMP to grab data, so if your device can communicate using SNMP, there is a very good chance that MRTG will work.

A compatibility list can be found at the official MRTG site.

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