I've just changed ISP and I'm pretty disappointed with the transfer rate.
My previous connection has a download speed of 1.08 Mb/s as seen from this site: http://speedtest.net and the download transfer rate is about 100kb/s for sites that doesn't limit their bandwidth.
Now my connection has about 2Mb/s download speed but the transfer rate is dancing from 20-50kb/s . I was expecting a speed much higher than this because of the download speed that I'm getting when I'm testing.
The question is what's the difference between transfer rate and download speed, is it normal to have a high download speed but low transfer rate, should the download speed be proportional to the transfer rate?
Download speed is fast but transfer rate is slow
data transferdownloadinternet connection
Related Solutions
There are 3 things you can try:
first, if you're having a slow speed issue, it could be related to your ISP's DNS servers. Try setting your DNS servers to Google's DNS (8.8.8.8 & 8.8.4.4) or OpenDNS's servers to see if there's a difference. The reason uTorrent could be fast may be because it's using IP addresses, bypassing the DNS lookup...
Additionally, I recently bought a new Cable Modem (Docsis 3.0 complient) and saw a huge performance gain from that (From averaging 30/kbps upload before to 130 after). So if you've had your cable modem for a while, you may want to get a new one.
Finally, you may need complain (squeaky wheel..) to find the right cable repair guy. I remember about 4 years ago i was intermittent having speed issues. I called so often, like every time it went out, that I had a string of (literally) 15 cable guys (Internet "specialists") come out in about 45 days. One day, I had 4 trucks in front of my house... Anyway, it wasn't until a cable tv specialist from the cable company ran some comprehensive diagnostics on the line coming in from the tap. He went the extra mile and fully diagnosed my issue and was able to justify the cable company coming out and rerunning the line to my house due to poor signal. That was an extreme situation, at the very least they may be able to boost your signal if you're actually having an issue.
Are you sure you got control of BITS and BYTES?
When testing your speed with speedtests online, you're measuring BITS per second. When downloading files, your speed is in BYTES per second. As there is 8 bits in a byte - Your download speed "should" equal your speedtest-result /8.
Getting 8mbps on speedtest, would give you 1MB/s download-speed.
Also check your sources. (Local-FTP???) You should also run different speedtests to verify a result. You will almost never get a 100% correct answer by running a speedtest, but it will give you a pointer.
To answer the question - there is software to monitor your computers bandwidth use, but it's not likely that's the culprit.
My guess is mixed terminology if you say the speed is 5 times higher on speedtest.
Addition: I just did a speedtest on speedtest.net. In my example, I "should" get a download speed of 32,5MB/s. Now - with that speed there are other things limiting downloads (like disk-speed+++) but it should give me a pointer of what I could expect with hardware that supports it.
Best Answer
If by Download speed you mean advertised or speedtest download number and by transfer rate you mean speed you get when downloading a file, then yes, generally, all else remaining the same, if one increases the other should as well. File download rate(kBps or kilobytes ps) has a theoretical max at 1/8 th of Download speed( Kbps or kilobits ps).
There could be ofcourse other factors at play. For instance did you verify the 2Mbps Number at speedtest.net? Is the new transfer speed tested on the same server as earlier?
There are a few other posts which seem to be about similar issues, which might have solutions that could help -
What downloading speed i should expect?
Download Speed is consistently at 16kbps