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What DSL speeds can I expect?

Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 9:09 am
by eastwind
I am just about to make the switch from dial-up to high-speed internet. I live in a rural area and the only plan in my price range was 512K DSL. What is a reasonable download speed that I can expect to have? I've heard that 35 KB/s is needed to stream video and that 56 KB/s is the maximum I can realistically get because of overhead. Would 40-50 KB/s be normal? Also, I live fairly close to the ISP's office (a little over 1 mile away). Will my speeds be affected at all by that distance?

Re: What DSL speeds can I expect?

Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 9:27 am
by Mentawl
With DSL, the distance you're most concerned with is the distance to the telephone exchange that your phone is hooked up to. It'd have to be a really long, or really poor quality line to be unable to max out a 512K service. I'm about 5.3km from my exchange (as the crow flies, so longer via cable), and I can get around 4.5Mbps after finally getting BT to admit there was a problem with the cable running into our house and replacing it.

I'd expect you'd get near the maximum download rate from a 512K line, so around 50-60kb/sec. If you don't, I'd consider getting your telecom to have a look at the phone line :).

Re: What DSL speeds can I expect?

Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 10:56 am
by FuturePastNow
You can call and ask how far you are. At 19,000 feet from the CO (about 5.8KM), the absolute best speed I can get is 384K up/down. That's what a Tier III tech from the phone company told me.

Re: What DSL speeds can I expect?

Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 9:00 pm
by eastwind
Thanks for the responses. I figured that I was close enough to the central office to receive the highest speeds available. I have another question to ask. As I mentioned above, I have heard that 35KB/s is the minimum required to stream video from the internet. Is this true? If so, how much speed would I need in order to receive higher quality video. Also, must I have more bandwidth to stream live events?

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Re: What DSL speeds can I expect?

Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 9:23 pm
by thecoldanddarkone
The DSL minimum is usually at 75-80 percent of the package. It's not unusual for you to get much less at other sites. The more bandwidth you have, the better for streaming. Hulu recommends 1mbs. 512kbs is truly cutting it razer thin.

If this makes no sense, forgive me I should be sleeping.

Re: What DSL speeds can I expect?

Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 4:42 pm
by FuturePastNow
eastwind wrote:
Thanks for the responses. I figured that I was close enough to the central office to receive the highest speeds available. I have another question to ask. As I mentioned above, I have heard that 35KB/s is the minimum required to stream video from the internet. Is this true? If so, how much speed would I need in order to receive higher quality video. Also, must I have more bandwidth to stream live events?

Thanks for any help you can give me.


At 384kilobits which works out in the real world to about 40kilobytes per second (384/8 is 48 but something is lost along the way), I cannot watch YouTube videos without pausing them at the start and letting them buffer to 60-70%. Assuming the same "conversion rate" 512Kbps (if you actually get that) would be around 53KBps nominally, so you would have a slightly better experience that me.

At 40KBps, streaming live stuff that can't be buffered simply does not work. In the best case, I get audio with a slideshow video. Usually the audio skips like the video, though. Audio-only streaming like internet radio is good, but will often pause for a second when I load a web page. Major downloads (like, say, torrents) that take longer than "overnight" are a no-go web browsing while downloading them is impossible.

I, too, hope all that made sense.