Actual Download Speed VS Advertised Speed

[Cat Graphic]

Hi,

 

I've recently changed my internet provider because of a deal. I used to have 400mb/s download with Vidéotron but it used copper cable. Now that I'm with Bell, they announced 1GB download with Fiber. When I'm testing the speed on https://www.speedtest.net/ , I do get connected to the best server near me with 1ms at ~1GB download (physically located 5 minutes of me) so in theory it seems to be better. But something I've realized is that when I'm downloading files from Mega or Nopy (File hosting sites), the download speed is way slower than what I used to have with 400mb/s. I'm aware that it's /8 as it's actual megabytes instead of megabits, but I've just downloaded the newest version of Blender (183mb) file from Blender.org and it took 4 minutes.

 

I'm suspecting that depending on which server I'm downloading will affect the ping, which won't give the 1GB advertised download speed, but is this normal? On Steam I did actually download my games pretty fast so I see that it does work... but why so many other sites are slower?

 

I've also used fast.com in the past (But I'm not sure if it's reliable) and it did give me an accurate amount of 400mb/s before, but now it's ~40mb/s. The server is physically located in Montreal, which is 2 hours of where I live.

Is this normal or should I contact Bell? They are covering all around Canada so I'm surprise of this issue.

 

Thank you! 

[BondiBlue]

The actual speed depends on the upload speed of whatever server you're requesting data from. Your results sound perfectly normal. 

[Chris Pratt]

Not sure what's going on with Fast.com there, but what you're describing is pretty normal overall. 1Gbps is just your downlink. That doesn't mean all servers on the Internet are actually going to send stuff to you that fast. In fact, probably anything over 200Mbps is going to be enough to pull downloads at whatever max speed the server is willing to give you. Having higher bandwidth is mostly about multitasking, i.e. you, your wife, and your 2.5 kids can all be streaming, and you can still download that new game at max speed, etc.

 

[Cat Graphic]

37 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

Not sure what's going on with Fast.com there, but what you're describing is pretty normal overall. 1Gbps is just your downlink. That doesn't mean all servers on the Internet are actually going to send stuff to you that fast. In fact, probably anything over 200Mbps is going to be enough to pull downloads at whatever max speed the server is willing to give you. Having higher bandwidth is mostly about multitasking, i.e. you, your wife, and your 2.5 kids can all be streaming, and you can still download that new game at max speed, etc.

 

 

Ahhh, thanks a lot for confirming! I didn't thought about the server side upload speed and how having more download is mainly focused for multi user stability instead of funneled to one connection.

I'm still wondering why I had faster speed with my old provider for certain sites. Would you know if internet provider matters? As if they had better connection than my current one or am I just hallucinating.

[Chris Pratt]

27 minutes ago, Cat Graphic said:

 

Ahhh, thanks a lot for confirming! I didn't thought about the server side upload speed and how having more download is mainly focused for multi user stability instead of funneled to one connection.

I'm still wondering why I had faster speed with my old provider for certain sites. Would you know if internet provider matters? As if they had better connection than my current one or am I just hallucinating.

Hard to say at this point, but that kind of stuff can be very variable. Especially when it's something that is serving a huge amount of data like Mega, Steam, etc., It mostly just depends on how heavily the service is being utilized at the time. They have bandwidth maximums as well, so it gets divvied out according to the need.