downloads

I have windows 98 se, aol 7.0 on a 56 k dial up connection, lots of room on hard drive, 288 Megs of Ram but when I download off the internet it runs about 2-3 kb's a second is all. Anyone know of a way to speed this up? Also I have downloaded download accelerator but seems not to have speeded it up any. Maybe this is normal?

Whats your modem connect rate?

I have a 56 k modem if this is what you mean, otherwise I am not sure what the connect rate is. I do know that when it firsts starts it is much faster but after about 3-4 seconds it starts slowing down to the rate mentioned in my first post

Try putting your curser down on the two little computers in the task bar when you are connected and it should tell you the connection rate. It might be 56000 bps, but the most I ever got was 48000 bps.

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You miss 100% of the shots you never take !

[This message has been edited by Cowboy622 (edited 01-23-2002).]

carpenturr--KBps or kbps? The former (2.5KBps=20000bps) could be quite typical of what someone in an older neighborhood with lots of phone users might get. It is because the phone company has split the "pairs" to accomodate new phone users over the years. Such a split does not have much effect on phone calls, but cuts your internet capability in half or worse(down from 53000ps potential).
Ask your neighbors how they are doing.
And as carson says you can test your connection speed.
Not much you can do about it, except go for cable or DSL. You might come out ahead since they will offer another ISP and help get you off AOL. (Whoops, now I will have ruffled feathers!)
There are tweaks for dialup, but usually they add only about 10%.

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Jim
WIN98, IE6, cable,
Norton AV, ZoneAlarm

lol, well thanks everyone for your responses, mostly to you Welsh Jim for trying to ge me off AOL. I do think what you just said is right about the phone service being the big part of the culprit, as I have tried every other way but DSL or Cable, thanks to all for responding

You will never get 56,000KB/s cause the feds limit it to 53sumthin' 'er other.But,if you get between 45,000 and 50,000KB/s,your doing finer than many.
The reason the Dn/Load may start fast then slow down,is because the first read line of a download is usually a header and it squirts thru' this pretty fast. But,if you are indeed,slowing down to that few KB/s for the rest of the download,it may be a physical problem with your phone lines.Could also be a prob with your ISP.Might want to give them a call?

A place to test your speed would be here:
http://bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/

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Headin' over there>>>

Its also highly dependent on where your d/l from,I'm on cable but if I try d/l from a busy server my rates are poor.If your d/l via a peer-to-peer program (morpheus,kazaa,grokster etc..) you probably aren't going to get much higher than you are.If its from an Internet site? you might try d/l at a different time of day when traffic may be lower.

Results

Your raw speed was 21121.57 bits per second.
There are 3 meaningful ways we can interpret this number:

Communications

21.1 kilobits per second

How communication devices are rated. Kilo means 1,000 and mega means 1,000,000. Examples include 56k modem and 10Mbit Ethernet
Storage

2.6 kilobytes per second

The way data is measured on your hard drive and how FTP programs measure transfer speeds. Kilo is 1,024 and mega is 1,048,576.
1MB file download

6.6 minutes

The time it would take you to download a 1 megabyte file at this speed.
Dial-up Internet speeds in Mid US


average

your speed

56K modem

compared to all connection types worldwide yours is poor


Thanks for the site to test this out, the above is the results of that test and as you can see, it agrees with me and me it that I have a poor connection.

Try asking your phone company to increase the gain on your line.

You can run a pretty decent upload/download test from here:

PC PITSTOP

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PROPHET of the POD, c.1998
www.NUTBURGER.com

I want to thank each and everyone who responded to my question. Even if I have not improved my d/l time, at least I now understand what the problem is, thanks again, one and all.

Is this the original modem...or did you add this one,reason is...on the properties of the modem there exists a check that allows "ceilings" of modem speeds...and sometimes the ones you add,do creative things unless you "tune "em in"...just checkin...for the knowledge of it...you can go to START,SETTINGS,CONTROL PANEL,MODEMS,then PROPERTIES...and look at the speed thats set.If you're staying with the setup you got,think about the "newer generation" modems...Dont know what they're doing ,but they've gotten quicker. (I had a Zoom modem that I replaced with a DSI by Creative..both were 56k...somehow the DSI is quicker,avg at about 35000bps against a 28000 on ANY day...and yes,I tested it in several systems)!

And as a last incentive to give AOL the boot in favor of cable, I just ran the same test. 891 kilobits per second.
Need I say more?

Hi carpenturr, this is what I did to speed up d/l's on my 56k. First of all I guess I'm fortunate for I connect at 53333 most of the time, but anyway, I went to http://techtv.com went to screensavers and in their d/l of the day archives got a little program called, End it all. Before I download I use this to close all programs running. It will protect the ones you need but close all others. Hope this helps. billy1
Time of day is a concern also. If my download gets as low as you are talking about, I usually get corrupted files, so I watch it and abort if it goes to low and try later.
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Gateway 2000
Windows 98
Intel Pentium (r) MMX
P55C-200 Pentium MOBO
64mb ram
3.2gb IDE hard drive
Wife said,"Get a hobby"Son-in-law gave this to me. Now its, "you still on that"?

[This message has been edited by billy1 (edited 01-24-2002).]