Can anyone tell me what is difference between the transfer rate of a
HTTP download using internet explorer vs FTP download ? Also why is it
that when I run a speed test from some sites I get 1.8Mb/s but when I
download something I get 345KB/s ? Is that my browser is running slower
then usual ?
thanks all feedback welcome
Unless you are downloading from the same site that you used for the speed
test, and that site guarantees equal bandwidth for downloads as they do for
their speed test, then don't expect different sites to give you the same
response. Obviously if a site is being hit hard, it needs to distribute its
bandwidth amongst all concurrent connections. They may also choose to
throttle their maximum bandwidth for downloads. You are probably going
through a different route (set of hosts) to reach one site than you do for
another, and each host will have varying bandwidth and a different load of
connections at that time. You are not subscribing to a service with a
guaranteed minimum transfer rate and you cannot force other hosts or sites
to provide maximum bandwidth just for you or force them to connect to huge
trunks to provide you with as much bandwidth as you desire. You get what
they choose to give and what every host in the route between you and them
choose to provide. You are not in control of anything past your own host.
So how does a speed test comprised of downloading a few kilobytes to maybe a
megabyte equate to you downloading from a DIFFERENT site a file that is many
megabytes in size? A speed test is like taking a snapshot of the highway.
Oh, look, there are few cars in that snapshot so it should be a breeze to
travel that way, but a snapshot a minute later shows a multiple car crash
that blocks the entire highway (actually just a lane block will do to pile
up traffic). Snapshots are just that and cannot be used to provide adequate
information that represents actual results in usage over time. Unless the
sentence is a one-word sentence, you cannot tell what is the sentence from
one word.
