aTortle

To clarify further: Look at this page: http://mobroadbandnow.com/broadband-101/broadband-speeds/ The second table shows the time it takes to download a file for different connections speeds. When I observe the entry for speeds 768K to 1.5M (which is about where I test) the time for a 4MB file is 46 seconds - which is about what happens when I download that size file. Shouldn't that be closer to 4 seconds? There is something I don't understand. Shouldn't a speed of 1MB/sec download a 4 MB file in 4 to 5 seconds? What am I missing?

Ok Mudmanc4, I changed those values for Firefox as follows: network.http.max-connections 256 356 500 network.http.max-connections-per-server 8 15 30 network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy 10 20 50 The first column contains the original values. Changing these made no difference; the usual download speed for a file is still about 150KBPS. It has been this way for a long time and I never looked into it before. Should file download speeds be consistent with the 1.1MBPS results from the speed test here and elsewhere?

I took the testmy.net download speed test and scored 1.4MBS - which is what I would expect using the particular hughes.net plan that I am on. However, when downloading files - even large ones so I cam watch the speed variance as it downloads - I customarily average about 130KBPS as reported by my browser (Firefox 17.0) The time to completion of the download is consistent with that. This is about a tenth of the measured speed on the test. Other online tests I have used have given me approximately the same result - about 1.1MBPS. I have computer expertise in some areas but I have to admit I do not understand much about this speed topic amd the net protocalls that control it. Can someone explain why actual file downloads are not proceding at at least 1MBPS? Is this expected behavior, or is there something I can fix to bring up the file download speed and the net browsing speed as well (I would expect them to be related)?