Download speeds

[damocci]

OK, I've had iBurst since October 2006, and in the beginning it was an absolute JOY! I mean I'd average download speeds in excess of 300KBps. Now when I mention download speeds, I'm referring to downloading videos, games, music, not just regular web browsing.

Lately I'm lucky if I get over 10KBps. Every website I visit opens up in jiffy, but once I start downloading anything, iBurst practically pulls the handbrake. What's up with that? Is this happening to anyone else?

***Edit
Oh, BTW, I am in an area that shows up as dark green on the iBurst signal-strength-o-meter, I always have 100% signal strength, so that's not the problem.

 

[MrH]

Still flying here in CT at +1mbps right now even though I also had some slow times in the past it was never anywhere as slow as 300kbps.

If I had 300kbps I'd throw the modem out the window yet you seem to have been happy with that "speed".

Maybe your tower is overloaded or from your "happy" max 300kbps you could just have a bad/weak signal.

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

You sure you aren't capped?

When you say lately do you mean over time or as in since a few days ago?

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

Maybe your tower is overloaded or from your "happy" max 300kbps you could just have a bad/weak signal.

He said 100% signal and dark green ares, shouldn't be that..

btw, I think he intentionally capitalised the 300 KBps and 10 KBps, I mean he couldn't really be getting 10kbps.. but then again 300KBps is probably even weirder.

 

[incaseofire]

Seems some people are talking a lot of good things about Iburst..
Maybe a little sympathy for the average user out there would be in order???

 

[MrH]

He said 100% signal and dark green ares, shouldn't be that..

btw, I think he intentionally capitalised the 300 KBps and 10 KBps, I mean he couldn't really be getting 10kbps.. but then again 300KBps is probably even weirder.

I never saw that "edit" he made to his post when I posted, but for 100% signal strength getting only 300kbps is impossible unless his tower is overloaded or something is wrong his side........dare I say it..........MTU maybe.

 

[MrH]

Seems some people are talking a lot of good things about Iburst..
Maybe a little sympathy for the average user out there would be in order???

If you've read some of my other posts you'll know I do not only say good things about iBurst, since as a company they "suck" big time.

It's a good system run by idiots as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

Well the Plumstead tower is like that.. I've plugged my modem in at friends houses around there and you just get 100KB/s with ease. If you were an average user here you'd say the same thing..

Don't see why he should say iBurst is worse than it is for him because of other people's experiences.

But you get sympathy, bad iBurst connections aren't a happy place

EDIT: Mr.H you see that he was talking about KB not kb... I'm not sure what's up with 300KB/s though?

 

[damocci]

The thing that irks me is that when I'm downloading, the needle on the speedometer of my iBurst dashboard averages 800KBps, sometimes even getting to 1MBps, BUT when I check the download dialogue box (you know the box that tells you x-MB of y-MB downloaded, z minutes remaining) that's where I see the 10KBps.

I don't know if that makes sense, but bottom line is that my dashboard shows one thing, but the download dialogue box shows others, and I believe the dialogue box because it literally take HOURS to download 100MB. And it can't be the sites that I'm using because most of my downloads come from Rapid Share, and they're very fast when I download from work.

And to top it off, even if I do decide to download something overnight while I sleep, I wake up to find that, say, 500MB of a continuos 800MB file has been dowloaded, only to have the connection reset by the server. Which means essentially, have thrown away the monetary equivalent of 500MB because I would obviously have to start the whole download again. Oh, this problem only really started about a month or so ago.

BTW, I am on the G3 package, I have used little over 150MB of my bandwidth this month because it's frustrating having a product that says it's superfast, only to have it perform worse than dial-up.

 

[The_Unbeliever]

And to top it off, even if I do decide to download something overnight while I sleep, I wake up to find that, say, 500MB of a continuos 800MB file has been dowloaded, only to have the connection reset by the server. Which means essentially, have thrown away the monetary equivalent of 500MB because I would obviously have to start the whole download again.

Get a download manager like Free Download Manager, available from http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/ for free.

I use it with great success. If the server on the other side supports resuming, and your connection drops, then you'll be able to resume downloading from where you stopped without having to start from the beginning.

It can also throttle itself so you can browse while downloading. And you can throttle individual downloads as well.

 

[MrH]

The thing that irks me is that when I'm downloading, the needle on the speedometer of my iBurst dashboard averages 800KBps, sometimes even getting to 1MBps, BUT when I check the download dialogue box (you know the box that tells you x-MB of y-MB downloaded, z minutes remaining) that's where I see the 10KBps.

I don't know if that makes sense, but bottom line is that my dashboard shows one thing, but the download dialogue box shows others, and I believe the dialogue box because it literally take HOURS to download 100MB. And it can't be the sites that I'm using because most of my downloads come from Rapid Share, and they're very fast when I download from work.

And to top it off, even if I do decide to download something overnight while I sleep, I wake up to find that, say, 500MB of a continuos 800MB file has been dowloaded, only to have the connection reset by the server. Which means essentially, have thrown away the monetary equivalent of 500MB because I would obviously have to start the whole download again. Oh, this problem only really started about a month or so ago.

BTW, I am on the G3 package, I have used little over 150MB of my bandwidth this month because it's frustrating having a product that says it's superfast, only to have it perform worse than dial-up.

That dashboard thing is rubbish and you can't by what it says, I use BWmeter which is spot on.

Besides that I timed downloads from RS through Flashget and most the time during the day downloads average 340mb to 390mb per hour and after midnight between 410mb to 440mb per hour.

From the speeds you are getting there is something wrong for sure, how far are you from the tower (you can't go by the 5 green lights) you need to run UTtracestar and position your modem (or antenna) so that you get the best signal.

You can find UTtracestar on this forum in this thread:

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=28356

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

The thing that irks me is that when I'm downloading, the needle on the speedometer of my iBurst dashboard averages 800KBps, sometimes even getting to 1MBps, BUT when I check the download dialogue box (you know the box that tells you x-MB of y-MB downloaded, z minutes remaining) that's where I see the 10KBps.

I don't know if that makes sense, but bottom line is that my dashboard shows one thing, but the download dialogue box shows others, and I believe the dialogue box because it literally take HOURS to download 100MB. And it can't be the sites that I'm using because most of my downloads come from Rapid Share, and they're very fast when I download from work.

And to top it off, even if I do decide to download something overnight while I sleep, I wake up to find that, say, 500MB of a continuos 800MB file has been dowloaded, only to have the connection reset by the server. Which means essentially, have thrown away the monetary equivalent of 500MB because I would obviously have to start the whole download again. Oh, this problem only really started about a month or so ago.

BTW, I am on the G3 package, I have used little over 150MB of my bandwidth this month because it's frustrating having a product that says it's superfast, only to have it perform worse than dial-up.

Like Mr.H said, use BWMeter to monitor the real speed on your connection, but the speed in the download window should be the real speed.

You can't use a download manager (to any benefit) when you download from Rapidshare, unless you have a Premium account? The download will be a bit slower than you can pull from a normal http server. Also, not being able to pause your downloads means you really shouldn't download 800mb files off rapidshare. I used to get that a lot, but since rapidshare moved to .com and redesigned their site it was a lot more reliable so it could be a combination of iBurst and their free servers.

 

[MrH]

To multi thread RS downloads with Flashget or other download managers it will pay to get a RapidShare account, maybe share an account with a few friends as I do then it does not work out expensive.

I just renewed my 3 month account and it was just over R160 and well worth every cent.