ADSL Bandwidth Monitoring

[Joao Barros]

On 9/8/07, Bahman M. <b.movaqar at adempiere.org> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have an ADSL connection at home.
>
> When I'm _uploading_ files the whole upload bandwidth is consumed; so
> far so good.
>
> But when _downloading_ no more than 30~40% of download bandwidth is
> consumed.
>
> The guys in the ISP say they've granted me the requested bandwidth but
> this is not what I see in action.
>
> How may I know the real bandwidth limits of my connection?  Any tool or
> trick?  Or maybe I'm misunderstanding something about ADSL bandwidth?

First of all you have to take into account that with an ADSL
connection, I'm guessing PPPoE, you have overhead due to protocol
tunnelling.
Next you must verify that you don't max out your upload while testing
download speed. From my tests, up to 90% upload bandwidth usage is
safe and shows no impact on download performance.
And for last, use multiple download sources as only one may not be enough.
Find http or ftp mirrors close to you (on your ISP for ex) and start
downloading multiple ISOs for example.

Note: Make sure the device taking care of the PPPoE connection is
powerful enough to support your bandwidth. For example, I still have a
Linksys WRT54GL as router and I can easily see 100% cpu usage and load
>1 and thus I can't use my max contracted bandwidth. Use the modem or
a powerful enough machine running FreeBSD of course :)

-- 
Joao Barros