'Real' timings for file sizes & connection types

Or..... A K is a K is a K.... isn't it???

Q. I don't understand why my connection is supposed to be 512kb and my downloads and speed tests show it at 59kB or something like that. What's going on?

A. Virtually every new internet pc user will ask this question at some time so don't worry if you too are having trouble working this one out. There are two factors at play here. The first is that the speed of the connection is measured in Kilobits and the size of your file is in KiloBytes. As a byte is made up of eight bits the maximum file size you can download in one second on a 512K line is approx 64Kilobytes. The second factor is that the rating is the maximum and depending on time of day and number of users connected to an ISP's local node you can reasonably expect to see up to a 20% defecit in speed. You should hope to be downloading at least 5 KiloBytes/sec on 56K and 50KiloBytes / sec over 512K connections. Approx times taken to transfer data can be seen below