[nzlug] Broadband bandwidth drop: WTF?

[Mark Foster]

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008, Robin Sheat wrote:

> On Monday 21 January 2008 20:05:03 Cliff Pratt wrote:
>> I think that the 2Mbps is a *maximum* that you can get under ideal
>> conditions (eg distance from the exchange, quality of line come into
>> it). Most people get less than that - many a lot less than that.
> The maximum for an ADSL line is something like 8Mb (I think). An average line
> should be able to reach 2Mb quite happily. For example, I'm currently
> connected at 7616 Kbps, although the actual rate I get depends on things like
> the time of day (as apparently Telecom is quite bad about over-committing
> their DSLAMs).


7616 or therabouts is the theoretical limit that I seem to recall for 
ADSL1.

> However, I think the real issue behind the speeds is a confusion over bits and
> bytes, as others have mentioned. The speeds mentioned sound about right for
> that to be the case (i.e. 2Mbit is 2,000kbit, and 2,000/8 is 250kB, which is
> exactly what was described)

Yep. Trap for new players that one.