OT DSL

That's 16725.33333 bits per second ... that's not DSL speed, that's

19.2 dial-up modem speed. AND you think it's an improvement?? That's terrible.

Paul

Something's still wrong Frank. I can download a file that size in one or two seconds. Some of them are so fast that as soon as I click the center mouse button the pic pops open. My DSL is fast. I mean like REAL fast.

I don't know how big a 7562 line file is, but I can usually get one that size opened and on the screen in three seconds. I just went and timed one while I wrote this.

............D>

"B" and "b" are used to mean different things. I don't know of any commonly used difference between "k" and "K".

Paul

"B" and "b" are used to mean different things. I don't know of any commonly used difference between "k" and "K".

Paul

Within the context of the original statement, bits/sec or bytes/sec, transmission speed and file sizes, I am not aware of any commonly used differentiation between "k" and "K". I recall a thread in one of the other ng's, DSL or cable, that tried to make a case for "k" meaning 1/1024. I don't recall ever seeing that argument before ... or since, and I've never seen it used that way. Often I will see kb or KB but, it's the case of the bee that conveys the bit/byte distinction. The case of the kay commonly follows along but, in and of itself, conveys nothing beyond kilo. A Kilo is still a kilo.

Paul

The case of the kay commonly follows along but, in and of itself, conveys nothing beyond kilo. A Kilo is still a kilo.

Paul ~~~~~~~~

Ah, but when marketeers get ahold of it, then it's quite the problem of what a 'K' or 'M' or 'G' means. Just watch any of the computer help groups, and it doesn't take long for someone to start yelping that the hard drive the bought advertised as xxx GB shows up as only yyy GB. Allowing for the bytes that are lost to you from formatting and other overhead, the big difference is that the label on the box is using GB as decimal based billions of bytes (1,000,000,000) and most system functions use GB as binary based "billion" (1024*1024*1024 or 1,073,741,824), so fewer GBs show up.

Wouldn't it be great if some standardization could be agreed on, and used by all. Would save us at least a few KB of usenet traffic! (Or did I mean kb? I'm sooooo confused!) Val

Hah! I've basically been with Earthlink for ages (through Netcom, then Mindspring, etc.). I download a lot of binaries from various news groups (rail/vehicle/aircraft subjects) and I have not noticed any difference in speed, it still takes forever thanks to being stuck with dial-up 56K (tried to get DSL but they say I'm too far from the switch at the phone company....and the cable company here, I absolutely REFUSE to give a penny's worth of business to.)

Bzzzzzt!

Before improvement that's 4.9 kilobytes per second. I average about 3.2KBps in a metro area even with v32bis compression dialed in at 115,600 baud (compressed). I get occassional bursts upward of 7K, but it depends on the server at the other end, traffic, etc.

9 seconds sounds about right. That's 130,666 bits per second or 16.3 kilobytes per second. I can't get THAT on my dial-up.

Jay Modeling the North Shore & North Western C&NW/CNS&M in 1940-1955 E-mail is now open snipped-for-privacy@aol.com

Psssst!

16725.33333/8 = 2090.66666 2090.66666/1024 = ~2KBytes per second after improvement. That's less than 19.2Kb/s 115,200 is serial port to modem. Depending on what kind of "graphics" file it might be fairly uncompressible modem to modem.

Yeah, but you should be able to get 16,725 bits per second on a really bad line anyday. My mother gets 24Kb/s on some of the most horrendous phone wire cat 2 (supposedly) that I've ever seen in rural IA. It's been in the ground at least 50 years.

Paul

in article snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, Steve Hoskins at snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net wrote on 7/24/03 11:22 AM:

I didn't mean connection speed as in 56kb (or is it KB?), but rather in the time it takes my newsreader (both windows and mac) to establish a connection each time it wanted to read or post a message. I think the old news readers on Earthlink.net asked for a username and password for each message, etc. Mindspring didn't do that (even at my old 26kb), but when I switched to earthlink and DSL, the downloads got lots faster, but the newsreader was molasses for each new message, post, etc. The new news.west.earthlink.net is quick.

Oh, and I've been with them since the old netcom.com and TIA as well.

Hmmm....I still take the same amount of connection time. I use Forte Agent for the news groups so perhaps it does have something to do with that setup.

Earthlink has required user authentication for quite some time now, and as you mention, Netcom and Mindspring did not. I think what happened is that Earthlink got smart and realized a LOT of people were "feeding" into their new groups without paying.

You have me beat....never even hear of "TIA" unless you mean the long-defunct Trans International Airlines (of course, you don't, but that't the only "TIA" I know of...)

in article snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, Steve Hoskins at snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net wrote on 7/24/03 7:53 PM:

My earthlink.net news reader seemed to be re-authenticating EVERYTIME I asked for anything, not just once at the start of the session. The new one seems to do authentication once and then keep it for some time.

TIA is The Internet Application which could be used by ix.nnetcom.com shell users to simulate PPP or SLIP over a dial up connection prior to Mindspring.

I used a Mac OS 7 back then and later a PC running NT 4.0. Now I use Mac OS X and Safari or browsing and Entourage for mail and news.

I think the confusion here is that my Netscape Communicator reports connect speed in BYTES per second, not bits per second, so my 3.6 KB per second is upward of 22K baud. Considering a lot of that is graphics (being the web) and probably uncompressible, that's not bad. Not impressive, but considering traffic in the metro area, about the most I can expect.

Jay Modeling the North Shore & North Western C&NW/CNS&M in 1940-1955 E-mail is now open snipped-for-privacy@aol.com

"JCunington" wrote

I think the confusion here is that my Netscape Communicator reports connect speed in BYTES per second, not bits per second, so my 3.6 KB per second is upward of 22K baud.

Jay, Now you're opening a new can of worms. Baud and bits-per-second are not interchangeble terms. Baud refers to the rate of change in the electronic state of the signal, which in modern modems can equate to several bits per baud.

Val

With stop bits and other overhead, 10 baud is about 1 eight bit byte per second.

Ed. in article snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com, VManes at snipped-for-privacy@NOSPAMrap.midco.net wrote on 7/24/03 11:07 PM:

I knew that from my Fundamentals of Data Communications class, but the instructor was rather hazy on that point and couldn't really explain it. Either he thought we wouldn't understand the arcane details or he didn't have enough knowledge himself. Not sure which.

Jay Modeling the North Shore & North Western C&NW/CNS&M in 1940-1955 E-mail is now open snipped-for-privacy@aol.com

"Edward A. Oates" wrote With stop bits and other overhead, 10 baud is about 1 eight bit byte per second. ~~~~~~~~~~

When equipment ran at 10 baud, that probably was true. Searching for the baud to bps ratios, I could only find solid numbers for up to 9600 bps modems (remember those???), which were described as 2400 baud - thus four bits transmitted for each electronic state change. Found one reference to the 28,800 standard (V.34) using 3200 baud ( 9 bits per state change!)

Val