Download speed variances

[B3nchm4rk]

On average, when I run a test on speedtest.net, I get between 5-7 Mbps, and this is over a wired connection. I'm also an avid Steam user. When I download games, I download roughly @ 500-800 Kbps.

However, yesterday my girlfriend was downloading a game from Steam, and she was getting anywhere between 2.4-2.7 Mbps, and hers was over wireless.

I'm totally confused here. My network drivers are completely up-to-date, and there are no problems within Windows to speak of. What could be causing such a huge variance in bandwidth? And is there anything I can do to optimize my PC?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[smorizio]

Depends on the age of the router and her wifi chipset in her laptop.
If the router firmware was old or she was using older wifi driver her system may have slowed down or maxed out. Also wifi is open there may be leaches. With router more people on the router the slower each users max bandwidth is going to be.

 

[B3nchm4rk]

Depends on the age of the router and her wifi chipset in her laptop.
If the router firmware was old or she was using older wifi driver her system may have slowed down or maxed out. Also wifi is open there may be leaches. With router more people on the router the slower each users max bandwidth is going to be.

Re-read the post. She's getting speeds 4x faster than me. I'm wired and she's wireless. I just got the router 2 months ago. And my wi-fi is password protected and monitored so no leeches. My desktop has a top of the line motherboard so I doubt its the NIC or chipset.

 

[manofchalk]

Your getting confused between MB (Megabyte) and Mb (Megabit).
There is a significant difference between the two.

Speedtest gave you a 7Mb/s speed, which translates to ~900KB/s which you are seeing when your downloading from Steam (your probably losing 100KB/s because of other traffic or just the other end being slow).

If she is downloading at 2.5 Megabits per second, that translates to 320 Kilobytes a second.

Her copy of steam is probably set to show download speed in terms of bits, while yours is set in terms of bytes.

This might help.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dnd28lQHquU

 

[B3nchm4rk]

Your getting confused between MB (Megabyte) and Mb (Megabit).
There is a significant difference between the two.

Speedtest gave you a 7Mb/s speed, which translates to ~900KB/s which you are seeing when your downloading from Steam (your probably losing 100KB/s because of other traffic or just the other end being slow).

If she is downloading at 2.5 Megabits per second, that translates to 320 Kilobytes a second.

Her copy of steam is probably set to show download speed in terms of bits, while yours is set in terms of bytes.

This might help.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dnd28lQHquU

Hmm. I wasn't aware there was sucha setting on Steam. I'll have to look further into it and let you know what I find. Thanks for the tip.