Why am I getting 1Mbps streaming with a 10Mbps internet speed?

[rowlfe]

The problem is you are on cable broadband, yes? Your connect SPEED of 10mbs is a MAXIMUM rating. The ONLY way to get anywhere NEAR that speed is by yourself, with NO other users on the wire with you. The problem is, you are on a party line, and suffer from the "party line effect". The cause is the access point at your ISP at the cable head end. Everyone on the wire uses a transmitter, a push to talk walkie talkie to send data over the wire. You listen or you talk, but not both at the same time. Your ISP has a single transmitter just as YOU have, which means your ISP can only talk to ONE user at a time. SPEED is determined by the radio frequencies used and is a constant. THROUGHPUT is the amount of data moved per unit time, and is what varies with the number of users sharing the transmitter at your ISP. In essence, you talk in short bursts of 10mbs. As the number of users increases, the number of bursts you get per unit time decreases, which means your throughput drops. This is what the party line effect does, drop everyone's throughput as the number of users rises. A wireless network suffers from the exact same thing, but on a smaller scale, with fewer users/transmitters. So, the number you get when you perform a "speed test" is actually a measure of throughput, NOT your connect SPEED with your ISP. And you are at the mercy of every link between you and the target computer you are talking to. The slowest link determines your throughput overall for moving data. You could be your own worst enemy if you have more than one computer running more than one application. Each application and computer shares the data pipe in and out of your house. Your BEST performance is had with one computer running one application. Get rid of wireless, so you get out of the party line inside your house. DSL does not suffer from this effect since DSL is in effect a port on your router connected to a port on the router at your ISP, with no sharing. Cable measures speed in BITS, which DSL uses BYTES, which is why there IS a factor of 8 involved. My 256K DSL is equivalent to a 2mbs cable connection, only MY throughput is a constant, while throughput on cable drops because of other users. Chances are, if you are NOT using a wireless access point in your house AND you limit your use to one computer with one application, the circumstances are beyond your control.