At the moment I have a 50 megs symmetrical unlimited internet plan, but no matter the device or connection method (5G, LAN) my download/upload speed never exceeds 5 megabytes even though the speed tests always show 50/50.

Is it possible that my ISP is limiting this speed per device so that a single device does not hold all the bandwidth?

And what does this have to do with piracy? Well, between downloading files at 5mbs vs 50mbs there is a lot of difference, especially a lot of torrents.

  • zurohki@lemmy.fmhy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Network data rates are usually measured in bits while the size of data is measured in bytes.

    Probably for historical reasons. Bytes weren’t always exactly 8 bits, so the number of bytes you’d get through a modem in one second varied depending on what byte size / character encoding you were using.

    You’re complaining about getting 5 instead of 50, but if you’re actually getting 50 megabits then that would deliver around 6 megabytes per second. Add some TCP overhead and that would mean your results are exactly in line with misreading the units.