This might be a "DUH" question, but

[DocClock aka MadClocker]

Me not being a network guru..I am wondering why on my dialup I can start a download, and it will start at around 10-16kps(kilobits per second), but as soon as it gets going, it will drop and stay around 4kps.
Why is this, and can I do anything about it? Oh..btw it just droped to 2kps..This is too much, 5+hrs to d'l' a 45mb file? guess I'll have to wait till midnite to attempt it again,as I can't have my line tied up that long durring the day.
Any tweeks I should know about?
Any help would be an improvement.
Thanks in advance,
Roderick

[RoadWarrior]

Some browsers and web accelerators start downloading before you've clicked on the file, or in the case of browsers, while you're still selecting a location for it and naming it. Therefore you are still only really getting 4Kb per sec, it's just it pre-loaded a chunk and made it seem faster at first.

You might see huge text files, like project gutenberg e-texts ACTUALLY downloading at 16-20K per second, but this is because text is highly compressible and the compression routines in the modem hardware each end can do about 4:1 compression on plain text. However, .zip files, .exe installers etc, are highly compressed already and modems can actually lose throughput trying to compress these sometimes. i.e. on a 56k connection you might expect 5.3K/sec peak throughput on binaries, but if compression is turned on you might see it peaking at 4.5K as it tries to compress them but ends up with more data than it started with.

Anyhoo, hope that gives you an idea of the likely causes of that sort of observation,

regards,

Road Warrior

[corruption]

The 10-16k/s reading that you are getting is a software bug. You will never get anything over 7k/s off of dialup in the best situation. If you have an exceptionally good connection, you might connect at 53kbps (6.625k/s tops).

Think about this.....
There are 8 bits in a byte......you connect at a theoretical max of 56kbps.....
Therefore 56,000bits per second / 8bits in a byte = 7kiloBytes per second.

In Bermuda I was lucky to connect at 36.6 with my 56k modem.....that means that I would get a max dl speed of 4.575k/s. You are experiencing a limitation of technology. The dialup modem will not be able to connect any faster. It has to take a digital signal and convert it to analog to send data and convert analog to digital to receive.....that's why if someone picks up the phone while you're online and whistles you get disconnected. (signal interference) DSL communicates on a different frequency on a phone line and transmits signal by sending "one's" and "zero's". (trying to keep things simple here...)

Anyway, the only way to improve your dl speed would be to reduce noise in your phone line, or switch to an ISP that provides "high speed" service. (DSL or cable)

[DocClock aka MadClocker]

Ok, and here's another question...Why is the phone line limited to 56k by the FCC?
Are they afraid that somebody is gonna get their data through b4 their computers can scan it? With DSL and cable out there and huge bandwidth, I see no reason for the 56k limit on P.O.T.S. unless there is a technical issue with a bandwidth larger than 56k?
What really blows, is all I want to do (at present) is d'l' a driver for my cousin's cable modem. Using a low speed connection to get a high speed connection really chaps my @$$ but hey they never said it would be easy being the family tech :)

[the adam]

random google search: http://www.seanet.com/help/dial/56k.shtml#4a

[BigDan3131]

Whats the overall speed of the number it uses to dial in? When I had AOL i could switch the numbers the service connected thru. If you have more than one number your dialup service uses. I would use the one in your area code that you know wont have many users on. For instance my local area had 7 numbers I could use, I picked the one that was a industrial area and had few homes in. I had the best speed out of those seven from that one.

[Antillian]

I'm with ya on this one, I've been on dial-suck for five years, with little chance, even today of getting anything better than satellite. Sat. is too expensive. There's a possibility that I might be able to get wireless broadband sometime in the future, so I'm keeping my ears to the ground...or in this case, the air, lol.
I know whatcha mean about being the family tech, I'm that guy too. Sucks sometimes.

[RoadWarrior]

About that signalling current thing, I had heard a little while ago that a new modulation technique had been discovered to get 200-300k down a phone line, without going over the limits. I don't think it is going to roll out though, due to lack of market. The ppl who are never going to get broadband in their (rural) areas won't benefit because it needs a line good enough to get 48K+ connects on and many ppl out in the sticks don't get that even, but around 33K max.