Download speed and concentration

Did you ever (for dial-up) go to download something and when the download dialog comes up it says that download speed is something like 5k per second?

I don't understand this. If there's not other internet activity and if the person, me, has 56k with a 49k connection, why can't I concentrate all of that bandwidth (bandwidth?) on the current download? After all, there's nothing else that should be working when the download is downloading.

Is there anyway to concentrate all of the bandwidth and speed into downloading a file? Thanks!

Garfield

If you have a 56k modem this doesn't mean you will download at 56 KB/s. 56k = 56 kilobits per second. I'm thinking you're thinking it's supposed to be 56 KiloBytes per second. Since you connect at 49k your download speed is about right. 49k is 5.9814453125 KB/s to be exact.

Bytes not equal bits .. u're doing just fine .. that's the average speed 56K users get.

Oh my gosh! How embarrassing. I'm familiar with bits and bytes and the relation (8x), but I just didn't make that connection with this. Oops! Sorry bout that.