What would my download speed actually be?

[Tony]

I'm upgrading to time warner cable in a few days and i was testing out how much faster my download speed and time is compared to my old internet. I had the really old version of AT&T and my download speed was 76kbps which was really slow.

If i took the 3mbps offer from TWC would my download speed be 3mbps? I did my math and it would be 39x faster than the download speed that i currently have.

However, when i went to http://www.speedtest.net to test out the internet speed of my school as I am currently using the computer in my class right now. The result was a 14mbps download speed and a 10mbps upload speed however when I actually tried to download a 1.6gb file, it didn't download at 14mbps but instead at 800kbps. That is 18x slower than the download speed reported to me by speedtest.net

That made me think that if i got a 3mbps from TWC it wouldn't actually be 3mbps if i tried to download and would probably be significantly slower. Or will my download speed would be exactly 3mbps because it's not like a school where every computer is on the same server sharing internet speed?

[Aaron R]

You're half-right, if you get a 3Mb download connection, the 3Mb is the total amount available for your network. Which extends to every device on the network. Also note that due to fluctuations between your ISP (Internet Service Provider) and the servers you're connecting to, the speed can change.

[Akshay]

if they said its a 3mb speed internet, then u will get 30% of that 3mb speed is 900kb. Also substract some amount for network disturbance and other reasons like other user, server error etc. This have very less effect, but its there. So any net plan u using, u will always get 30% of that speed.
try using internet download manager while downloading, it boosts speed.

[Dustin]

Both answers are wrong. One thing to understand is the difference between MBps or KBps vs Mbps or Kbps. Little b means bits big B means Bytes. Speedtests tell you Mbps, not MBps. Download speed from the browser is MBps. To convert, you divide by 8. In reality you will not get that speed so instead divide by 10. So for a 3mbps connection, you will get around 300KBps download speed.