When running speed test with my ISP's ftp site bash is reporting speeds like this:

5242880 bytes received in 17 seconds (2.9e+02 Kbytes/s)

instead of a speed of 2900. Is there something I can put in my .bashrc to make this read correctly?

Chris

Last I checked, bash itself didn't have any ftp-ing abilities. You'll want to look into the configure file of the ftp client for options like "report in scientific notation".

That is, I assume 2.9e+02 to mean 2.9 x 10^2.

2.9e+02 = 290, not 2900
2900 would be a REALLY GOOD connection!!

I'm running ftp from the command line:

ftp 209.26.88.30

Doing a test just now with gFTP I get the correct speeds:

RETR /test.1meg
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for /test.1meg (1048576 bytes)
226 Transfer complete.
Successfully transferred /test.1meg at 113.65 KB/s

RETR /test.5meg

150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for /test.5meg (5242880 bytes)
226 Transfer complete.
Successfully transferred /test.5meg at 140.73 KB/s

The object behind all of this is that I'm trying to convince my ISP, Embarq, that in the morning I may be getting close to my 5Mbps speed I'm paying for but as the day progresses the speeds get slower and slower. I've seen some that are close to dial-up.

So the problem appears to be when ftp is run from the cl.

I noticed my mistake in the conversion after I sent the message, you're right 2900 would be awfully fast.