How fast are high speed connections?

[hannamyluv]

We just got a new toy that allows me to see what speed a user is connecting at when they visit my site so we can find out how fast our pages are loading for a customer. The question came up about how fast is a DSL, cable, ISDN or T1 line. I had never thought of it and they all seem to be grouped under "high speed" So how fast is high speed? Certainly T1s are the fastest but how much faster?

[martinibuster]

dslreports.com is arguably the reference site for all things broadband. A good place to poke around.

[dingman]

Certainly T1s are the fastest but how much faster?

Actually, my DSL is as fast as a T1, and the connection is good enough to support three times the bandwidth if my ISP would sell it to me. Some providers will. Cable is generally variable bandwidth and can often be faster than DSL as well, so there are probably plenty of people who have T1 or greater speeds on DSL and cable connections.

[mossimo]

Hello hannamyluv

I believe that's a question without an answer.
For example my cable connection routinely runs at 2.5/3.5 Mbps witch is above the average T1 connection speeds.

Speed brakes down like this:

ISDN - 64 or 128 Kbps
DSL - 384 Kbps to 8 Mbps
Cable - 384 Kbps to 10 Mbps
T1 - 1.5 Mbps
T2 - 6.3 Mbps
And so on.....

So that’s what the books say but reality asks:

- How far from the nod or switch are you?
- What is the noise level in the lines?
- What’s the overall system capacity?
- What condition is the end users hardware in?
- What is the average network congestion?

Take all this into consideration and your T1 can run like DSL or your cable connection can fly like an OC-48 transatlantic trunk!

To me all I care is are my users sweating like pigs on there dial-ups or are they breathing easy with there spiffy broadband connections (yes I said the word spiffy).

The moral of the story is T1’s aren’t the fastest and "high speed" is all that matters.

According to me, But I am mostly wrong (and dam proud of it)

By the way hannamyluv can you let us on to this new toy you found yourself.

[tedster]

Here's a related thread [webmasterworld.com] with a link to a tutorial on directly measuring connection speeds.

[hannamyluv]

Thanks for the info, everyone.

The new "toy" comes as part of a bigger analytic package. The company I work for finally felt that looking at how people interact with our site is important so they are shelling out the big money for real stats (and neat toys that go with them). Gee, did I ever wonder how many poeple from NYC were surfing my site? No, but now I know. Fun, fun, fun for me for the next few weeks. :) I love looking at this kind of stuff and tweaking here and there as needed.