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General discussion

DSL download speed very slow

Aug 31, 2005 9:58PM PDT

I have Verizon DSL coming into my house. My download speed keeps dropping as the download progresses usually ending up around 200 KB/sec. I should be getting 1.5 MB or higher according to my research. I contacted the company and they ran a test online and the tech said the speed was fine that they don't support download speeds. I tried downloading on my husband's laptop and got the same speeds. I used AOL and IE to access the internet no difference. I feel I am not getting much better than dial up. Any suggestions?

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That's 1.5 megabits per second, not megabytes.
Aug 31, 2005 10:06PM PDT

200KB (kilobytes) per second is very good for DSL.

Bob

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Just a little math and binary. . .
Sep 1, 2005 8:47AM PDT

Since ADSL is asynchronous, meaning there is no clock, you have a start bit and a stop bit for every word or Byte. A Byte is 8 bits. Add the start and stop bits and you have 10 bits. 200 KB is in reality 2 Megabits. Nice for ADSL.

Let me brag a little. My Comcast Cable is advertised at 4 Mb/s (small b = bits, large B = Bytes). With my old modem I got around 3.7 Mb/s download and I was happy. With my new modem with updated protocols I now get around 4.7-4.8 Mb/s.

If cable is available in your area, go for it.

HTH,

Wayne

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DSL slow
Sep 1, 2005 9:19PM PDT

Thanks, I feel okay now. It is a speed I can live with. I did have Cable before DSL but could only get one way with no prospect in the future of two way. I am also paying a lot less since I don't need the second phone line. I had to have two modems and a router (no wireless) and was always resetting the modems to get them to work. Sometimes it took 15 minutes of fiddling before I could sign on. Sometimes I couldn't get it to work anyway. Plus my download speeds were not that great. Kay