upload/download mb/s? Can someone explain what this means?

altaprod said:

I just did one of those speed tests to see how fast my internet connection is but I'm confused a little. In the first picture I posted it shows : Download of 5224 kb/s and Upload of 460 kb/s.

3 questions:
1) Is that fast, normal or slow generally speaking?
2) Is that great, average, or below adequate for Skype video calls?
3) How does 5224 kb/s correlate with the "6m x 512k" advertisement from ATT RoadRunner in the second picture?

I'm trying to determine what that speed is compared to my test and I don't really know what kb/s is. Thanks for any help.

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hey man, ill try to answer as basically as possible.

1) that is quite average.
2) that is quite average for a skype call. me and my gf can skype on 256kbps download/64kbps upload.
3) i have no idea i have never come across this in my country. EDIT: actually.. if you multiply 768 by 7 (taken from that 2nd picture) you get 5376..that is the MAXIUM download speed you can get, you are getting 5224. therefore it can be said that your extremely close to the exchange (the further away the more latency, the more latency the more loss of data) normal latency is about 5%, your under that bracket so yea, thats a big +


the basic idea here is that the first number (5224kbps) is how fast you can download things to your computer (i.e. receive video/audio. uploading at 460kbps is how fast you can send things from your computer (i.e. send your video/audio).

Wiki is your friend

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_rate_units#kilobit_per_second

this gives a detailed overview of kbps

altaprod said:

the number changed a lot, as you can see below. I guess it's still OK for video Skyping.

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yes thats still fine. probably notice a slight pause between replies and all that (kinda like satellite TV when live), but u kno... still fine.