Broadband puzzle.

[htnakirs]

I have a 256 kbps (kilobits) connection.
Netmeter, a bandwidth monitoring software (the best, I believe), reports a steady 31 KBps (kilobytes) when downloading anything.
Now for the curious part. Within the downloading application itself - be it Opera or utorrent - the speed is 28 KBps. Spiking rarely to 31 KBPs, but remaining steady at 28.

Has anyone else faced this issue?
I would believe some form of bandwidth reserving is taking place,which makes QOS the suspect. After going through different sources, I did try disabling it as well as reducing the reserved proportion to 0%. But the status quo remains.

Are there any other bright ideas?

[gaurav_indian]

lol speeds vary b/w 27 to 32 kbps in 256kbps connection.Thats not a serious issue.

[Gigacore]

we wont get full speeds while downloading torrents :(

[htnakirs]

Gaurav, Gigacore :
You are missing the point. Netmeter is telling me that I am downloading at 31 KBps, where as the downloading application shows that only 28KBps is being accounted for. The remaining 3KBps (or 10% of the total bandwidth) is being pilfered. Who is doing it?

[Sunny1211993]

man it happens.it depends on the servers u r downloading files from or trackers of the torrents u r downloading.
so dont panic for 3 kBps.

[Rollercoaster]

it might be the way diff software calculate the bitrate. ofcourse u can depend on that the traffic stats utility to use the method to get the biggest number :)

there are many things that can influnce it.
-one is using the diff dividers like 1000 and 1024 and
-average time like averaging using the previous 2 seconds etc.
-stage were the monitoring is done. meaning including the protocol data or not. most probably opera and such determine the speed by what they get not by what the adapter receives and modems and adapters count inc to protocol data (headers, traffic packetsm requests, CRCs etc)

if u used 10 diff utilities u would get 10 diff numbers

[ravi_9793]

All home connection comes with ratio 1:2

Means,If you have 256 Kbps connection, your speed will vary from 128 Kbps-256 Kbps...And so, your downloading speed will vary between 16KBPS-32KBPS.

[htnakirs]

Thanks Rollercoaster, yours was the most relevant answer.
While what you have stated could be possibilities, are you certain that there is no Win XP service that is using up the 10% bandwidth? I am hunting around for some tweak to maximise the actual download rates.

[Rollercoaster]

well the only service that might use b/w is the automatic updates of windows or other software. check that

[ravi_9793]

well the only service that might use b/w is the automatic updates of windows or other software. check that
There can be some unwanted script too..........
they may be using bandwidth without user knowledge.

[Rollercoaster]

duh! in that way there can be anything.

[ashok jain]

Rc is right.