Slow File Transfer

[Ala]

Can anyone tell me some reasons as to why I would have such a slow file transfer rate?
I'm running off a small home network that has cable connection. No idea what my bandwidth is. How do I find that out and would that even figure into this problem?
The transfer rate wasn't always like this. To give you an idea, it's taken me 6-7 hours to download 1G (although I know the server was flooded with requests at the time as it was for a BETA client). I've also tried to download files off messenger and that has been REALLY slow. Messenger gives you some advice as to why you might experience slow transfer rates but I didn't find it helpful as I disabled firewalls, etc and it made no difference.
I'd like to change this situation as besides the obvious hassle it kinda defeats the purpose of paying for cable Am I just being impatient or does this sound like a reasonable problem?
Any constructive tips & feedback are welcome.
Thanks

 

[Krazeh]

Is it slow transfer all the time? How's your web browsing? Does it seem sluggish? What about ping times in games?

I'm on 1mbit adsl and tbh transferring files over messenger is still slow as hell, from the sounds of it you're just suffering slow transfer because of the overloaded server.

 

[Lazarus]

Ala,

It may be the server you are copying from which is causing issues. Wot you can also do is test the speed of your connection

http://www.dslreports.com/stest

Select one of the speed test links (e.g. Speakeasy [preferrably one that is not busy]) - Java needs to be installed.

Click on the Start test icon on the next page and leave the connection alon - it sho0uld come back and tell you of your speed test results

<edit> just noticed another section on the same site : http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks

it states :

[b]Tweaking may fix[/b]
Slow download speeds
Download slower than upload speed
Skipping in TCP streaming video/audio
Blank web pages
Connection issues to some sites

What have you got to lose?

 

[yaruar]

Can anyone tell me some reasons as to why I would have such a slow file transfer rate?
I'm running off a small home network that has cable connection. No idea what my bandwidth is. How do I find that out and would that even figure into this problem?
The transfer rate wasn't always like this. To give you an idea, it's taken me 6-7 hours to download 1G (although I know the server was flooded with requests at the time as it was for a BETA client). I've also tried to download files off messenger and that has been REALLY slow. Messenger gives you some advice as to why you might experience slow transfer rates but I didn't find it helpful as I disabled firewalls, etc and it made no difference.
I'd like to change this situation as besides the obvious hassle it kinda defeats the purpose of paying for cable Am I just being impatient or does this sound like a reasonable problem?
Any constructive tips & feedback are welcome.
Thanks

There are a number of reasons why it might be slow. It's most likely a problem there end with a large amount of downloads.

With cable I suspect you should be on 512k or 1mb. With this the maximum download rate should be around 50kb/s to 100kb/s although this will depend on a number of factors such as contention or line quality.

There is a possibility there is spyware leeching bandwith from the pc, best to run both adaware and spybot search and destroy just to check if there is anything (both free to download and run) sensible to do this anyway.

Also make sure any p2p software you might have is disabled as this takes up an inordinate amount of bandwith (kazaa is a pig for this as it often opens up so many ports that no connection is available)

As someone else said messanger isn't particually quick at downloading as it restricts it's own bandwith.

I'd definately reccomend trying a few test downloads from a few sites, in fact check when downloading adaware and spybot to see what speed you are getting from those.

Usually i'd hope to see between 20kb/s and 50kb/s from a decent site when running a 512kb cable modem. Anything below 10kb/s on a regular basis is a sign of something rather amiss.

 

[babs]

1GB in 6 hours is about 47KB/sec which isn't too bad if it's a 512K/600K cable connection on a busy server (as you state above). Remeber that when transferring over messenger your download is only as fast as the other person's upload, and if cable there is anything like cable here you're talking 128Kb/sec on most, so 16KB/s is all you'd get tops in that situation (from another cable user).

 

[Ala]

Got this result from Lazarus page link. Tweak
The speed test looked ok too
Thanks everyone for the great and helpful advice :wub: