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How fast is Cable Internet?

J

johnbro23

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 12, 2004
770
0
Pittsburgh, PA
How fast does Cable Internet go? The fastest I've gotten on my PC is around 300 kbps. I just got an eMac that uses Airport Extreme Card connected to a linksys router. I've gotten slightly slower speeds on my Mac.

My question is, if I get the Airport Extreme Base Station, will my cable internet go at 1500 kbps. It says it will go 5 times faster on the Apple website, but I'm not buyin it.
 
Airport Extreme is 5x faster than normal airport (roughly 50mbps vs. 10mbps) Don't expect speed bumps in AE if all you use is the internet. It really excels for network communications and the like.
 
Phatpat said:
Airport Extreme is 5x faster than normal airport (roughly 50mbps vs. 10mbps) Don't expect speed bumps in AE if all you use is the internet. It really excels for network communications and the like.
Click to expand...

I see. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
 
johnbro23 said:
How fast does Cable Internet go? The fastest I've gotten on my PC is around 300 kbps.
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Just to nit-pick, you're probably getting 300 kBps, not 300 kbps.

The difference is that B=Bytes and b=bits. 300 kBps is pretty fast. The cable companys advertise this speed as 3 Mbps.

Note - 3 Mbps actually translates to 384 kBps.
 
it all depends on what isp it is.

here is my connection:
 

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Just a wee tiny point for consideration:

Avoid NTL like the plague

Their reliability blows.

I'm using their 512kbps service and for about a year it must of had one cut out for about 18 hours. But for the last 3 months it has spent more time off than on. They have to be the worst provider out there. I am looking to change.

When it does work, the internet is not speeded up, just to confirm an already made point.
 
Are you checking the speeds at the same time of day and the same day even. Cable internet high speed varies depending on how many users in the area are using it. There is not a definite speed, just a range. My father in Law lives in a college town and he notices when the college kids are on break as his speeds increase quite a bit.
 
flyfish29 said:
Are you checking the speeds at the same time of day and the same day even. Cable internet high speed varies depending on how many users in the area are using it. There is not a definite speed, just a range. My father in Law lives in a college town and he notices when the college kids are on break as his speeds increase quite a bit.
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Adelphia 5mb cable.

I see ~560kbps sometimes.

I'm soooo happy with the service too.

-Rob-
 
i got comcast... but becareful with these guys.. they monitor their customers like crazy. its not too bad but i think their download is capped. i checked on one of those speed checkers and its about 1.44 MB connection
 
BaDBoY said:
i got comcast... but becareful with these guys.. they monitor their customers like crazy. its not too bad but i think their download is capped. i checked on one of those speed checkers and its about 1.44 MB connection
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Comcast capps out at 3Mbps. But . . . there are other things that slow you down before you get to the cap (usually). An example is the more cable internet users in you area, the slower each individual connection will go.
 
I have comcast, and it's pretty fast in my area. Just not as fast as when I'm at school (see below).
 

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The original poster appears to be slightly confused over the "5 times faster" claim of AirPort Extreme. To clarify:

If you normally get 300kbps down the wire, then, as others have said, this is the limiting factor of your speed - i.e. your ISP.

AirPort can run up to a theoretical 11Mbps and the new AirPort Extreme up to 54Mbps (i.e. roughly 5x11 - "five times faster"). But 11MPs is the same as 11000kbps.

What this means is that both original AirPort and AirPort Extreme can handle much bigger data rates (i.e. 100 or so times more) than broadband internet so they will not limit your speed. You could get up to 100Mbps (or 1000 if you have gigabit ethernet) down a wire, not a measly 300k but that's what your ISP is providing you with. So it is not your computer (PC or Mac) that is limiting your bandwidth. Getting AirPort Extreme won't make any difference with the internet but will be fast if you need to transfer big files over LAN.

Don't worry though - at home I'm stuck with 56k dial-up!
 
My Comcast cable is also 3mbps down, ~ 256kbps up. It's fast enough that any delay I see generally is at the other end (the visited server) rather than the cable speed. Only exception is with a few high-bandwidth download sites - like when I pulled a recent copy of the Fedora Core 2 ISO images.
 
hi_im_rob said:
Adelphia 5mb cable.

I see ~560kbps sometimes.

I'm soooo happy with the service too.

-Rob-
Click to expand...
I have Adelphia cable service too - I once got ~620KBps from the Netscape download servers (the 26 MB Netscape 7 download took only 30 seconds at that speed).
 
Oh yeah!!

<tongue in cheek>Well, once when I was using my 56k modem, it only took 4 days to download 2 ISO files!! So there </tongue in cheek>

Truth is I remember when I used to run a Hotline server off my PowerMac 6100, with 72MB of ram, a 2GB SCSI HD all on my 33.6 modem :D Oh yeah!! them were the days boys!!!
 
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