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Sunday Evening, the New Web Rush Hour
Barence writes "For anyone who assumes weekday evenings are the worst time to enter the online scrum, it may be a surprise to learn that the peak internet rush hour, when average web speeds slow to a crawl, is in fact Sunday between 5pm and 6pm. This surprise fact came out of Ofcom's recent research that also told us the blindingly obvious news that actual broadband speeds are less than half of those advertised by the ISPs."
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Back when I had Verizon's 3mbit DSL my speeds would be relatively close to the promise. Sure, some websites could max out quickly, but overall I was close to my limit. The same would go for if I downloaded multiple files simultaneously, their combined speed would be close to 3 mbit.
Now with Verizon Fios, I am once again hitting my speed (or very close to it) more most of my downloading.
"I knew that nobody would watch " + $show_aired_between_5_and_6.
But seriously, maybe just the TV program sucks around that hour? It seems like that perfect little area between afternoon anime ending and pre-primetime sitcoms, when kids are already at the computer and adults are still.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
1 person watching youtube videos could probably outdo 25 people surfing around for school.
Mom: Tommy, go do your homework!
Tommy: Okay Mom!
Tommy then sits down on the computer and watches Youtube.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Unlike cable, with DSL the bandwidth between your house and the CO is not shared with your neighbors. If that's where the problem is, the phone company may be able to fix it.
If the problem is between the CO and your ISP's POP, well, that shouldn't happen - it means the LEC screwed up pretty badly somewhere.
If the problem is between your ISP and the Internet, then your ISP sucks ass and you should find a better one. Your phone company probably doesn't advertise this fact, but most likely, it is possible to choose from many local ISPs. Again, this is unique to DSL.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Nope, not just the kids. The whole family.
"Primetime is Sunday between 5pm and 6pm" is not news to Ebay sellers or people who watch TV ratings. The reason why virtually every network or cable channel schedules their best shows on Sunday night is because almost everyone is at home that evening. Take Sci-Fi Channel for example. Or FOX. They moved Battlestar Galactica and X-Files from Fridays to Sundays, because they knew they'd get more eyeballs.
And Ebay sellers have known for a long time that Sundays net the most auction views. I schedule my auctions to end 9 p.m. Eastern/5 p.m. Pacific because I know I'll get the highest number of bidders during that time, and therefore higher sale prices.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I would have said Sunday evening was the heaviest time of use, just based on my experience selling items on eBay - it was always best to end an auction sometime Sunday night.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Are you getting that number from your web browser? Both IE and Firefox express speeds in KiB/s (bytes, and in base 2), whereas network line speeds are expressed as bits per second, in base 10. 3Mb/s is 3,000,000 bits per second, 375,000 bytes per second, 366.2KiB/s.
That's still a far ways between your numbers, but it does explain some of the difference. There is some protocol overhead at various levels to deal with, but those are relatively minor. Your best option is to use something like SPeakeasy's speed test, which will test your speeds, and report back in Kb/s (bits, base 10), and take protocol overhead into account, to see if you're actually getting close to advertised speeds. That way you're not comparing apples to oranges.
(If you are actually getting 50 kilobits per second, I am sorry, both for making assumptions, and for your sub-56k modem-ish speeds.)
Oh, you mean that thing they used to have, kind of like Youtube with feedback turned off? Does anyone still use that?
Or a very bad case of too much acronyms.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers