What SHOULD my download speed be???
 

What should the average download speed be.

I use LimeWire PRO 4.9.11 on a fairly fast laptop connected through a router to a Cable modem (Comcast). Generally my download speeds are 25-50kbs, sometime reaching 100 or slightly over.
When I download stuff directly from the internet it is usually at least 300kbs, sometimes as high as 500kbs. I realize that LimeWire is p2p so it won't be quite that fast, but I am wondering if it should be faster than it is.

On another note, I am unable to use LimeWire when connected to the network at my school, Bates, they block all p2p applications from connecting. Is there any tricky, not necessarily following the rules, way that I can connect, maybe some way to fool the network?

Thanks,
-Matt

My rates are...
 

I have a DSL connection of 1.5MB so when I am downloading files from the internet the rates are : 150-200 KB/s.

In limewire my average speed is around 100 KB/s !!! (Thats great!!)

So if you have a 1.5MBs connection, an my cable connection is 54MBs, why is your LimeWire rate the same or better than mine?

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.