100 Mb/s Shared vs 80 Mbps Dedicated Internet

[Azndude263]

Hi there, I was just wondering if someone could help me. I understand the basics about internet and know the difference between Shared vs Dedicated line for internet but never really did have a dedicated connection before so don't know what to expect.

I've had a 300 mbps shared connection before from Comcast and now a 100 mbps from Cox (different state. Both are shared and I noticed whenever I download a large file or torrent something, the maximum speed I usually get is about 30 mb/s for the 300 connection and 10 mb/s for the 100 through Cox so I figured I get about 1/10 of the download speed. I know the advertised bandwidth doesn't equate to the actual download speed (that depends on the server upload speed, distance, ping, etc...) but I've download files from many many different sources and that's the speed I usually get so I figured 1/10 of the bandwidth speed is a good rule of thumb for me.

Now, long story short is I've recently had a Century Link sales pitch and they say a 80 Mbps dedicated is totally different compared to the 100 Mbps from Cox (same price) due to being dedicated, he said something about a multiplier and is actually about 3-4x faster than Cox. I am not too sure what that exactly means. Now I know a little about shared vs dedicated and know that a dedicated line is of course better. But how about my download speed, will it be around 80 mb/s (my 1/10 rule of thumb) when I download something? Is it worth it to switch from 100 share Cox to 80 dedicated Century Link if prices are the same? Thank you so much for helping me out

 

[Pat Flynn]

300 Mbps = ~37MB/s. ISP's advertise in Mega-bits per second, and your computer will normally report speeds in kilo-bytes or mega-bytes per second.
For example, I live in Canada and use Shaw for internet, on a 150Mbps plan. My speedtests (speedtest.net) average north of 170Mbps on every test, and I can download from Usenet at about 19.5-20.5 MB/s.

The shared versus dedicated really may only apply to busy times. Basically, you'll get a guaranteed 80Mbps instead of a theoretical maximum of the other service. It's a trial and error situation really. Maybe see if they can set you up for a trial period without a contract so you can compare them