Understanding data rates

[#1]

Because of other things I needed to understand data rates.

Firstly I am taking a simple approach and I know that reality differs from theoretical maximums. I am only wanting definitions, I have asked plusnet but no response.

My data rate (that's the phrase on the help desk section of the hub1) is shown as 12549/55984. I assumed that that's the maximum I will ever be able to get, but there is no indication as to if this is Kbits or Mbits. I thought it was 12.549Mbs upload and 55.984Mbs download. I am in a 80/20 contract.

However when I looked at a device connected to the router, the hub1 reported the speed was 89Mb/s (again that's what the hub1 says). This indicated my assumptions were wrong. 1 device alone has a connection speed greater that the available speed.

Can someone point me in the right direction? Please.

[#2]

@briston 

80/20 is Mbps

12549/55984 is kbps or 12.540/55.984 Mbps.

You don't say what it is that you have connected to the router but that will be the speed that data can be transferred over your LAN or wireless link to the router. At this point if it is destined for the Internet it will only go out to the WAN at 55Mbps. This is generally controlled by downloading at speed into a buffer and then stopped until the buffered data is transferred.

Also look out for bps, bits per second, and Bps, bytes per second. There are 8 bits in a byte so the speed will be reported at an eighth of the bps rate.

[#3]

Forgetting about things that slow data down hopefully I have understood things correctly in that I have a maximum download speed of 55.984Mbs and upload 12.540Mbs. that's the speed of the line attached to the hub1.

The device connected via wireless to the router, no extender just a straight wireless connection to the 2.4Ghz stream, was a laptop. The 'Connection speed' is given as 89 Mb/s although this varied. I understand why it varied.

I understand from what you are saying, assuming no other device is connected and nothing else slowing things down, in an ideal world, data comes into the hub1 at 55Mbs and can transfer to the laptop at that speed as the incoming data is slower than the link speed. Data from the laptop can transfer to the hub1 at a higher speed than the hub1 can upload it so it buffers the upload.

I'm ok with the bits and bytes.

Thanks for your patience and help. Yes I am going to purchase a new modem/router and the old school engineer in me needs to understand what I am purchasing and what is needed.

[#4]

You have to factor in protocol overhead.

This "can be" quite substantial for wireless.

A wired connection has virtually no overhead. 😀