ARCHIVED: With a modem, why is my connection speed slower than the advertised speed?

Though modems are theoretically capable of reaching very fast transfer rates, the limitations of the rest of the telecommunications network make it impossible for them to reach those speeds. Consequently, your connection's speed is usually slower than your modem's advertised speed. A good analogy would be to compare high-speed modems to sports cars. Just because a car is theoretically capable of going 250mph doesn't mean that it can reach that speed on a badly maintained, curving highway in the middle of rush hour. Here are some common reasons why your fast modem might be poking along:

• In theory the download rate over copper telephone wires can be 53Kbps. In practice this rate is closer to 40Kbps, and this is for download speed only. The upstream rate is usually limited to 33.6Kbps. Poor connections or extremely heavy phone traffic can degrade this performance even more. Unfortunately, there is little you can do about this, unless the poor connections are inside your house. However, if you are getting consistently slow connections while dialing long distance and you have ruled out other causes for the slow connection, your long-distance carrier might be to blame.
• At certain times, dial-in lines, popular Web sites, or even the entire Internet might be slow due to the large number of people using those resources. A specific server can get slowed down or even crash if it receives too many messages at once or too many messages in a short amount of time. The Internet relies on many different interconnected computers passing packets of information along to their destinations. If these routers get overloaded, your Internet service provider or even the entire network can get slowed down.

It is common for dial-in connection speeds to be a bit less than the advertised speeds. In addition to the factors given above, Indiana University's dial-in lines are slowed when large numbers of people are trying to use the modem lines, especially during peak computing times such as evenings or at the end of a semester. To improve your connection speed, try connecting during non-peak hours, such as early mornings, late night (after 1am), weekends before 11am, and during televised sporting events (such as IU basketball games).