Miscellaneous Forum

I just checked the speed on my computer.
It says : 36322 Kbps for UPLOAD
10812 Kbps for DOWNLOAD
Does that sound right? I always thought the upload would be SLOWER than the download.
Jeannette

The term is relative I have discovered. It simply depends on which end of the wire you are observing. If your speed is recorded on the other end of a "wire", then perhaps the terms are switched. In any case, you usually receive data to your computer at a much greater speed then you would send from your computer

The upload and download speeds are a function of how the bandwidth on your onramp to the Internet is allocated (among other things). For cable systems (like mine), it is normal that much more bandwidth is allocated to downloads than uploads (as you would have expected). I expect that DSL is the same way.

How did you measure these speeds? They are rather high speeds, even for a cable system.

Bill

Bill
I am not sure I understood what you wrote.
Is the download supposed to be faster than the upload?

I tested it on my internet provider website www.surewest.net (they use fiber-optic cables).
I am happy with the speed...was just wondering about download vs upload speeds.
Jeanentte

For the home consumer, generally, the way you use the Internet is to download high volume content - lots of web pages, lots of graphics, even streaming audio and video. On the other hand, most people don't tend to upload a lot of stuff - you are mostly sending text back. So, one way to optimize your onramp for your experience is to split the bandwidth so that more of it is available for download than upload. Thus for a 1.5Mbps connection, you might have 150kps available for upload and 1.35Mbps available for download - which leads to nice fast download speeds which is where you need it - and you didn't need to have a 3Mbps line to get it.

I'll have to look at your website...also, you are on fiber optic, which if it goes all the way from your onramp's servers to your house, can be very fast. I don't know why they would have optimized your fiber connection so that the upload would be faster...it's possible that the test was flawed or not appropriate for such a high speed connection...

Bill