diagnosing network speed bottlenecks

[Gregory Boyce]

On Wed, 30 Sep 2009, Greg Rundlett (freephile) wrote:

> Speed tests like http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest?flash=1 report my
> performance as...
> 4,909 Kb/s Download
> 3,055 Kb/s Upload
>
> But, in my experience downloading files, I rarely get anything like
> that.   In fact, while the DSL Reports Speed Test is checking my
> system, I'm watching the "Network History" graph on the "Resources"
> tab of System Monitor (v2.26.0.1) aka gnome-system-monitor and it's
> not breaking 800Kbps.  I then used wget to download MySQL Workbench
> and it reports 33,373,104 downloaded in ~42 seconds at a rate of 783
> KB/s

800 Kb/s or 800 KB/s? (bits or bytes?)

You mention the download of MySQL workbench transfered at a rate of 783 
Kilobytes per second (KB/s).  With 8 bits per byte that works out to 6,264 
kilobits per second, or a 1355 kilobits per second over the speed test 
rating.

--
Greg Boyce