Hey. I have a couple of q's that hopefully someone may know. I live in an apartment complex with a fiber connection to the complex. I'm supposed to be receiving 8Mbit down and 8 Mbit up speeds.

1.) I only receive up to 2 Mb/s down and 6 Mb/s upload speeds when I run speed test. The tech support can't figure out why. I'm not running anything else. Any hints I can look at to see what's wrong? (Check for a bad switch etc)

2.) My torrents receive up to 2 MegaBYTE/s download. They don't seem to be limited my my 8 Mb/s download cap. Is there a reason for this? Does it use a different connection type?

3.) How do apartment complex's firewalls usually work? Do I have a open NAT when I use programs or am I using the same ip as everyone else? Can I check to see if my NAT is open? My xbox games lag like crazy when I play, but when I speed test during a game, I receive around 1-2 Mb/s, which should be plenty for xbox speeds.

Thanks! Just curious on all this.

There are a number of things that can affect entwork performance in circumstances such as yours.

a) is the connection at your apartment fibre or copper?
b) is each apartment assigned an IP from the ISP or are then NATed by the building's router and share an ISP IP?
c) is the building set up with VLAN's or some other networking architechture?

to your questions:

1) possible modem configuration issue, possible cabling issue, physical connection issue, switch or router issue (building or ISP) - you don't say whose tech support is stumped

2) unknown reason - don't look a gift horse in the mouth no it doesn't use a different connection "type"

3) depends on the building. Each apartment may be a VLAN, be NATed, to a single IP, IP's passed through to apartments, etc. There are a number of options. Best place to find out is ask the building's IT person.

Sorry I wasn't more specific but they're general questions with lots of possible answers.

If the tech can't figure it out then you need either a better tech or a different company. I'd try a live cd just to test to some dsl speed test site. It should be close to what is possible.

The normal answer is you will never get what they claim they sell you. Usually it is a possible number based on only you downloading. If everyone in you complex is downloading stuff then it may be limited.

Also they may have some soft of a router that can detect types of traffic and limit it that way.

What kind of stuff are you downloading?