It depends upon the sources you're downlding from. Not everybody you downld from will have superfast connections. And even those that do may be offering many upld slots spread between many users so the speed gets divided b/w them.

Techniques make a difference: See the following link & follow all the off-shoot links to find hints & extra skills to help: To continue files downlding (click on link) For broadband the further you are away from the phone exchange the greater the overhead loss. For cable it's similar plus neighbouring (your neighbours) peak periods which can reduce overall speed available.

Keep in mind also that speeds quoted at isp's are bits per second (bps), whereas LW shows them as Bytes per second. So divide your bps by 8 & it gives the Bytes per second. You also need to subtract overhead which ranges between 13-20%. "you can expect to lose 13% of your purchased speed at least when counting application data transfer rate." - http://www.pmasoft.net/englisch/oe/r...20internet.htm

Here's a test; downld a magnet link from here http://www.magnetmix.com/video.shtml & see what speeds you get. See Stief’s example: http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...692#post138692 to see what types of speeds you can get from these links.