I am connected with RoadRunner which from what i have heard is supposed to be much faster than 56k. But when it comes to downloading, it isnt very fast. Everyone else i know who has RR has a download speed of average around 30. Mine is around 5. It is ticking me off really bad. It works no faster than when i had 56k. Can anyone give me advice?

Hello!

You say that your friends have an average download speed of 300Kbit/s that cannot simply be the case since most people on Gnutella does not have that amount of bandwidth available when lots of people are downloading from them. I would estimate that an average speed of 150Kbit/s is a more true figure. I have a 8Mbit/s VDSL connection and I get at best 770Kbit/s connections. How fast you can download from someone is determined by alot of factors. For instance:

The most obvious one how fast connection the person has that you are downloading from. If that is a modem user then you will at best reach around 33Kbit/s from that user.

How many Upload slots that person have set in his/hers preferences. The more upload slots that person has and the more files(especially popular ones) that person is sharing the more people will be able to upload from that host at the same time and hence each user downloading from that host will get a very limited bandwidth.

Certain Highspeed users worries that they might get caught when sharing to much if they do it from their workplace or schoolnetwork therefore they have set the bandwidth distibuted/dedicated to Gnutella to a very low value maybe as low as 1% meaning around 100Kbit/s for one user that are downloading from a 10Mbit/s connection.

The number of hops away from you on the Internet also makes a difference. Generally the more closer to you geographically that a user is the better download speeds you will be getting from that host.

To really check if something else might be causing you the slow download speeds do this:

Search for Avril Lavigne-Im With You and select the 192Kbit/s bitrate option among the files in the search result because it will have the most hosts to download from.

It is a song that is popular and available from multiple hosts and hence you have a chance to see your potential. I would be surprised if you get any lower then 300Kbit/s.

A high speed connection such as yours and mine will show its true power when performing multiple downloads from multiple hosts. I was once able to download 8 files at the same time each with an average bandwidth of about 300Kbit/s. That is a record for me. The maximum speed that I have been able to reach from asingle host is 770Kbit/s.

In order for you to reach your absolute maximum potential when downloading from someone the following conditions have to exist:

The user that you are downloading from is maximum 2 hops away on the Internet.
It is true T-3 user meaning it has 43Mbit/s available as bandwidth.

It only shares maximum 10 files.

It has maximum 10 upload slots available.

And has allowed for 100% of its bandwidth for use on Gnutella.

You will then at best get 4.3Mbit/s download speed( if you where lucky to have such a fast connection in your upstream not likely since you are cable user) from that host. And that is really fast. However such lucky and good conditions hardly exists in the real world on Gnutella.

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<img src="http://www.jordysworld.de/emoticons/blob16.gif">Sincerely Joakim Agren!