Download Speeds

There are many different factors that can affect your connection speed; the top ten reasons are listed below:

1. Your Connection Type

The major factor affecting your download speed will be the type of Internet connection you have:

• Dial-up
  Can transfer a maximum of 56 Kilobits (Kb) of data a second, which means you can transfer just under 7 Kilobytes (KB) a second (1 Kb is equivalent to 0.12 KB). An average web page (including images) is approximately 50 KB; this means it would take around 7 seconds for the web page to load in your browser.
• ADSL
  Can transfer data at speeds of 256 Kbps up to 8 Mbps. A 512 Kbps connection will take approximately 0.8 seconds to load a web page, and just over 1 minute to download a 4 MB MP3 file.
• Cable
  Can transfer data at speeds of 1 Mbps to 10 Mbps. An 8 Mbps connection will take approximately 0.05 seconds to load a web page, and just over 4 seconds to download a 4 MB MP3 file.

2. Your Computer

Your computer's set-up and operating system, especially RAM availability, may affect speed. Computers lacking sufficient processing power or memory cannot keep pace with a high-speed connection.

3. Your Hardware

• Different brands of modems & ADSL filters can vary greatly in their performance and some may not give as high quality connection as others.
• Poorly functioning routers can also greatly limit the speed achievable on computers.
• Poor quality Wi-Fi connections between computers and a wireless home network may not be able to cope with high speed Internet connections.
• Loose wiring in telephone cables running from the modem to the telephone point may cause dial up and ADSL connection speeds to degrade, as can long extension cables.

4. Spyware

Connection speeds can be affected by spyware programs, which consume bandwidth and reduce download speeds. Run an anti-spyware program regularly to make sure that you do not have any spyware installed.

5. Other Users

If you have a home or office network and others are downloading or uploading, this may saturate the bandwidth, slowing down your downloads, email or web browsing.

6. The Quality of the Line

Dial up and ADSL customers will be affected by the quality of their phone line; the higher the quality of the line, the faster the connection speed.

7. Your Location

The distance of your home or office from the exchange will have a huge impact on the maximum download speed ADSL customers will be able to reach. In general, the further you are from the exchange, the poorer the quality of the connection. However, recent improvements in ADSL technology means that 1 Mbps ADSL is available up to 6 km away from your local exchange, and for there is now no distance limit for speeds up to 512 kbps.

8. The Internet

The Internet works by sending data through a chain of computers between you, your ISP and the web site you want to reach; this means that there may be limitations or congestion on any of the links between these points which may affect your speed.

9. Internet Traffic

During busy periods you may experience slower speeds as more people are accessing the Internet. Most ISPs will specify a particular 'contention ratio' for its customers - the maximum number of people that each customer will have to share their bandwidth with. For example, if you have a contention ratio of 1:20, you will have to share your connection with 19 other users. The lower the contention ratio, the better chance of reaching the optimum data transfer speeds.

10. Service Glitches

Whilst normally fairly constant, download speeds can suddenly drop if the service provider has technical difficulty with their network. Speeds should return to normal after a few minutes or hours.