The Internet Connection Experiment
Upon moving back to Rolla, I’ve discovered that the local cable company has upped their top tier of internet service from 5 Mbit to 15 Mbit. This excites my greatly because I often find myself downloading large files such as Linux ISOs and streaming high-quality media. Being the curious person I am, I had to figure out how much I could squeeze out of it.
After doing a bit of math, I figured that I could get approximately 158 GB of transfer per day, which is not taking any overhead into account. In order to reach this as a final number, I figured that I needed to saturate my connection with as fast of a download as possible. What better way to do this than with Usenet? Armed with my trusty usenet downloader and a collection of a bunch of Linux ISO NZBs (gotta keep it legit), I set it off on a downloading spree.
Here are the results:
All in all I ended up downloading 110.31 GB in a 24-hour period. As you can see with the above graph, I probably could have gotten closer to the theoretical maximum if not for the various slowdowns that were experienced. I would chalk this up to either my cable company overselling their lines or something causing my usenet connection to slow down.
Given the fact that some of the larger ISPs like to cut you off at a certain point, making their “unlimited” internet connection not so unlimited, this makes me worry a bit. I’ve seen limits under 100 GB, which I would surely blast through within a day or two if I had this speed on that ISP. This makes me feel sorry for all the people who have to suffer with that kind of service provider.