LinuxQuestions.org
Review your favorite Linux distribution.
Go Back   LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - Distributions > Mandriva
User Name
Password
Mandriva This Forum is for the discussion of Mandriva (Mandrake) Linux.

Notices


Reply
  Search this Thread
Old 10-09-2005, 08:48 PM   #1
MRDucks
Member
 
Registered: Aug 2005
Location: Tennessee
Distribution: Mandriva 2006,Gentoo,Linspire
Posts: 86

Rep: Reputation: 15
Internet speed settings?


I know this is probably a stupid question but are there any settings in a computers bios or in mandrake that throttle bandwidth?

I had a cable isp package that was 400 kb/s d/l.No matter what site I tried downloading from the best i could ave.was 200kb/s
.
The other day I had my service upped to 3Mb/s d/l.

Now the best I can do is 366 kb/s.This is a constant.I can see the download start at about 2700 kb/s.Within a minute it has trickled down to 366kb/s and stays there.This is using konqueror.If I use firefox my average speed goes down to 220 kb/s and stays?

I can go to toast.net and check my speed and it says I'm clocking from 2500-2700 kb/s?
This is very annoying.Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
 
Old 10-10-2005, 11:30 AM   #2
CragStar
Senior Member
 
Registered: Oct 2000
Location: UK - Frome
Distribution: Ubuntu
Posts: 1,081

Rep: Reputation: 47
Are you sure your not getting your bytes and bits mixed up here?

I have a 512Kbps (kilobits) connection to the net, but my max download speed is in actual fact around 56KB/s (kilobytes). It's usually a 10th of what the connection speed is (very rough rule of thumb!).

So in your case, your connection speed is 3Mbps but konqueror and firefox are reporting download speeds of 300KBs. Could this be what you are thinking? If you can download at 3MB/s you really do have a quick connection!

This link may help: http://www.onewebgroup.com/networkspeeds.htm
 
Old 10-10-2005, 07:24 PM   #3
tkedwards
Senior Member
 
Registered: Aug 2004
Location: Munich, Germany
Distribution: Opensuse 11.2
Posts: 1,549

Rep: Reputation: 52
As Cragstar said I think you're getting your bits and bytes mixed up. A 3Mbits/sec connection would equal 375,000 bytes/sec (3,000,000/8=375,000), so getting 366 k/bytes a second is very good - that's pretty much the fastest your connection can go, be happy!

As for traffic shaping this has nothing to do with the BIOS but Linux comes with very flexible traffic control. Unfortunately its also difficult to use. Probably the easiest way to get started is to see the shorewall Traffic Shaping Howto: http://www.shorewall.net/traffic_shaping.htm More detailed info can be found in the LARTC HOWTO: http://lartc.org/howto

Keep in mind though that traffic control can't increase your total bandwidth, Linux automatically uses all the available bandwidth on your connection. If you are suffering bandwidth problems then that's something to take up with your ISP - there's nothing you can do at your end. All traffic control allows you to do is prioritise the use of what bandwidth you have. So for example you might use it to prioritise interactive traffic like web-browsing and SSH while giving non-interactive traffic like bittorrent or Limewire a lower priority, so that your P2P downloads/uploads don't slow your web surfing to a crawl. This is what the 'Wondershaper' script mentioned in that shorewall page does.

Last edited by tkedwards; 10-10-2005 at 07:27 PM.
 
Old 10-10-2005, 10:04 PM   #4
MRDucks
Member
 
Registered: Aug 2005
Location: Tennessee
Distribution: Mandriva 2006,Gentoo,Linspire
Posts: 86

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 15
I did a little research on my isp website and my package is supposed to be 3 megabytes/sec.
They offer a 5 megabyte d/l package but its WAY expensive and not available in my area yet.This is from charter.com,my isp and cable tv provider.

I am downloading a gentoo iso at the moment.Its size is 679MB.Konqueror is estimating it will take me 35 minutes to download the file at 366KB/s.

Toast.net reports I just loaded 754,928 bytes in 2.137 seconds from nibble info systems server for a speed of 2826KB (with gentoo d/l paused)

Maybe I am confused.I just thought I was only getting a little over 1/10 the speed I'm paying for.I AM happy with my speed btw,I just want what I'm paying for.

When I type <netstat -a> in a konsole it shows 1 of 8 tcp connections active(the gentoo d/l)the rest are listening.

I hope the figures I provided will help to clear up my not knowing bits from bytes for you.I know I'm confused at the moment.

The thing that gets me is when I first start a d/l from a mirror(600+MB linux iso) it starts out at about 2700KB/s and estimates it will complete in 4-6 minutes then slows to 366 KB/s(exactly-everytime) no matter which mirror I choose.

I'll check out the shorewall traffic shaping howto in the mean while.

I quess I'm just wanting assurance I'm getting the speed I'm paying for.I dont really trust my isp "technicians" for the truth and it's usually a 15-30 minute phone wait to talk to one .

Thanks alot for the help/info.
 
Old 10-10-2005, 10:21 PM   #5
tkedwards
Senior Member
 
Registered: Aug 2004
Location: Munich, Germany
Distribution: Opensuse 11.2
Posts: 1,549

Rep: Reputation: 52
You're sure its megabytes/sec? I've never seen an ISP state connection speeds in bytes, it always seems to be in bits.

Quote:
Toast.net reports I just loaded 754,928 bytes in 2.137 seconds from nibble info systems server for a speed of 2826KB (with gentoo d/l paused)...it starts out at about 2700KB/s and estimates it will complete in 4-6 minutes then slows to 366 KB/s(exactly-everytime) no matter which mirror I choose.
The high-speed for a few seconds thing sounds like either a proxy server of some kind caching some of the data or more likely its just that it takes a few secs for your computer to calculate an accurate download rate. Either way if its consistent across many different sites it very much looks like 366KB/s is your limit, even more so that it almost perfectly matches up with 3000 Kbits/sec.

Last edited by tkedwards; 10-10-2005 at 10:59 PM.
 
Old 10-10-2005, 11:20 PM   #6
MRDucks
Member
 
Registered: Aug 2005
Location: Tennessee
Distribution: Mandriva 2006,Gentoo,Linspire
Posts: 86

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 15
Quote:
Either way if its consistent across many different sites it very much looks like 366KB/s is your limit, even more so that it almost perfectly matches up with 3000 Kbits/sec.
This is definately my limit and at 8 bits per byte it does match.I'll have to call my isp tomorrow.This has been misrepresented to me.My isp account screen clearly says 3megabytes d/l and this is what the tech i spoke to last week told me.The url to my isp site is HERE .On it tho megabyte isnt spelled out like it is on my acct screen.....hmmmm.I'll get to the bottom of this.

Thanks alot for helping me with this.
 
Old 10-11-2005, 12:21 AM   #7
tkedwards
Senior Member
 
Registered: Aug 2004
Location: Munich, Germany
Distribution: Opensuse 11.2
Posts: 1,549

Rep: Reputation: 52
From that charter.com site:
Quote:
* 3Mbps downstream — surf, search, and download large files at incredible speeds
* 256Kbps upstream — upload data and send attachments with ease
...
* Over 100 times faster than dialup; Up to twice as fast as 1.5Mbps DSL
Unfortunately they seem to be in the right - they say 3Mbps and the convention is to write bits as 'b' and write bytes as 'B', as in 3MBps. Of course like most ISPs they deliberately don't spell it out what they mean - they always quote the number which seems highest which in this case is bits, just like harddrive manufacturers quote size in megabytes that are 1,000,000 bytes, not 1,048,576 bytes as most software reports it.
 
Old 10-15-2005, 08:07 AM   #8
MRDucks
Member
 
Registered: Aug 2005
Location: Tennessee
Distribution: Mandriva 2006,Gentoo,Linspire
Posts: 86

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 15
I thought you would get a kick out of this.I've been calling my so called "high speed internet experts".The phone calls started out by me asking the tech if he knew bits from bytes and what my package was supposed to be.After being transferred to about a dozen techs I finally got a supervisor that could answer this and yes Its 3 megabits d/l I have.
The super asked if there was anything else he could help me with and I told him I still wasn't getting my full speed(375KB/s),I was only getting 365KB/s .(They only guarantee 70% of the advertised speed)
I'm surprised they dont have a smaller unit of measurement to advertise like "now with blazing speeds of 30 zillion microbits/s" lol

Some good did come out of this,2 of the techs were really interested in linux so I'm mailing one a ubuntu disk set(I got 10 free mailed to me awhile ago) and I'm burning another a copy of my mandriva install disks .
 
Old 10-17-2005, 04:06 AM   #9
tkedwards
Senior Member
 
Registered: Aug 2004
Location: Munich, Germany
Distribution: Opensuse 11.2
Posts: 1,549

Rep: Reputation: 52
You've got to wonder how much 'technical' support these people can give if they don't know basic things like bits and bytes. Anyway hopefully if they play around w/ Linux a bit they might be able to be more helpful to you in future
 
Old 10-17-2005, 04:15 AM   #10
Redeye2
Member
 
Registered: Feb 2004
Posts: 489

Rep: Reputation: Disabled
Quote:
Originally posted by tkedwards
You've got to wonder how much 'technical' support these people can give if they don't know basic things like bits and bytes. Anyway hopefully if they play around w/ Linux a bit they might be able to be more helpful to you in future
I too agree with the fact that "technical support" is more likely to be a person using an expert system (if lucky!) or someone who has little experience. Also, salespeople are really full of it! Once you start talking technical stuff they go "Sure sure, it has all that".
 
  


Reply


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off



Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
hardware settings - transfer speed MarcQuaghebeur Linux - Hardware 1 04-20-2005 10:39 PM
fixed ethernet card duplex and speed settings at boot codeape Debian 2 02-14-2004 01:23 PM
Changed settings using hdparm...disk read speed dropped ! twisted_mind Linux - Newbie 2 12-21-2003 11:02 PM
Is there a tool to monitor Internet connection speed and also network speed? xleft4dexy Linux - Networking 4 10-14-2003 10:29 PM
network card speed settings aslamg Linux - Newbie 2 11-04-2002 06:21 AM

LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - Distributions > Mandriva

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 07:16 AM.

Main Menu
Advertisement
My LQ
Write for LQ
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute content, let us know.
Main Menu
Syndicate
RSS1  Latest Threads
RSS1  LQ News
Twitter: @linuxquestions
Open Source Consulting | Domain Registration