Internet slower then my package deal.

[marcin00019]

Okay so I tested my internet speeds and speedtest shows 120 down 10 up which is what I currently pay for, people said that testmy.net is a more accurate site to test your upload and download so I did. My download seemed to be 28mb even after doing few re-tries of the test.
Even though it says 120 or 28 mb download when I actually download something the speeds dont ecceed 5-8mb/s why is that? shouldn't my download speed be same as my actual download or am I just not understanding something?

 

[boosted1g]

You can only download something as fast as the server sends it to you.

Lets say you can catch a 100mph baseball, if your 9 yr old nephew throws the ball at 10mph then you are only going to catch a 10mph ball.

 

[GoldKingCobra]

mb/s is megabytes while mbps is megabits per second, your getting 5-8 mb/s which is like saying 40mbps-64mbps, and that small difference from your actual internet speed is because of the distance between you and the server you are downloading from. Speed test sites tend to choose the closest or most optimal server for your test which is usually in a radius of a few miles, while downloading a random file from the Internet can be from anywhere or any random server at any distance from you, so you were just confused a bit, hopefully this helps.

And do you have Time Warner Cable by any chance?

 

[jackspeed]

mb/s is megabytes while mbps is megabits per second, your getting 5-8 mb/s which is like saying 40mbps-64mbps, and that small difference from your actual internet speed is because of the distance between you and the server you are downloading from. Speed test sites tend to choose the closest or most optimal server for your test which is usually in a radius of a few miles, while downloading a random file from the Internet can be from anywhere or any random server at any distance from you, so you were just confused a bit, hopefully this helps.

And do you have Time Warner Cable by any chance?

GoldKing is partially incorrect the mb/s is the same as mbps but is different then MB/s or MBps. A capital B means bytes a lower case b means bits. There are 8 bits in a byte. download speeds from web browsers are measured in Bytes not bits so you need to multiply by 8.

"I actually download something the speeds dont exceed 5-8mb/s" Im assuiming that there was a capital B. This means that you are probably only using 40-68 Mbits/s of your speed on that download. Also you are sharing your connection with others on your network ie phones, game consoles and other computers. ISPs can throttle connections as well they do prioritize traffic to speed tests.

Boosted is correct many websites will not use your entire bandwidth as they limit the speeds they upload per connection.

 

[GoldKingCobra]

@jackspeed, I've got to admit this is kinda getting confusing... :/