True Bandwidth
I’ve managed to push my Internet download speed to a new capacity - 738 kBps or roughly 0.7 MBps or ~ 5.8 Mbits. Thats about 4x T1 lines at my disposal. Not bad for a single cable connection. My upload seems to still be at around 92 Kbps*. Both these limits are of course capped by the local cable company, Comcast, so people like me don’t use up all the bandwidth. I say use it all up though - I’m paying for it and I might as well put it to use. All of this increase of speed has actually been due to me upgrading to Windows Vista. I believe it’s because Microsoft completely rewrote the TCP/IP code in Vista from XP, and also maybe because I’m now supporting IPv6.
I’ve also managed to reach a new peak within my home gigabit network while streaming multiple videos from separate computers to TV’s located across the house. while having the home audio system (which is also connected via CAT 5E) stream music throughout the house. I even have some nice WAN and LAN bandwidth graphs to look at.
*Seems Comcast is able to burst my upload bandwidth for a certain size amount, because I just uploaded a 3MB file at 294 kB/s.
**10/11: Hit 1.05 MB/s (yes, that’s bytes). Actually I just realized that the bandwidth I’m actually getting could be much greater and that the limit I’m hitting is due to the fact that I’m not hardwired and using wireless instead. I’ll be moving into my garage apartment in a few weeks, which was wired with CAT 6 to router when we had the house networked, so I’ll update this again when I get to test out that speed. This is a good article talking about the different cable types (CAT5, 5e, 6, 7).