Broadband Speed No Higher than 2Mb/s

[GAJ52]

Hi

My broadband speed seems to be capped at 2.0Mb/s, no matter which website I try and download files from it never goes above 2.1Mb/s.  I have done a few Speed Tests using the BT Speed Tester and it says I have a good speed of about 17Mb/s.  I rarely have any connection problems like dropouts etc.

I had this same problem a few years ago where I could not get above 1.8Mb/s when downloading files and a very helpful lady on this site called Stephanie said she would look into it for me and later confirmed there was some kind of cap and within a couple of days my speed went up to 6Mb/s Plus.

I have just upgraded my Router from a 'Hub 4' to the latest 'Smart 2' but sadly made no difference to the speed.

Can somebody please help

Glen

[gg30340 · Accepted solution]

Are you confusing Megabytes and Megabits?

People often confuse them. The difference between a (MB) Megabyte (used for file size) and a (Mb) Megabit (used for download speeds). People often assume that a download speed of 1 Megabit per second (1 Mbps) will allow them to download a 1 Megabyte file in one second. This is not the case, a Megabit is 1/8 as big as a Megabyte, meaning that to download a 1MB file in 1 second you would need a connection of 8Mbps.

[Anonymous]

How are you measuring your speed?

The most reliable way is to logon to the router and click on the Broadband Performance Test button, the least reliable way is a desktop or web based speed tester using wi-fi

[iniltous]

I think the answer may have been given 2MB, is very roughly 16Mb, that’s in line with what you expect

[NeilO]

Hi @GAJ52, can you post your router stats? 

[GAJ52]

I have just had another look at this problem and thanks to your help, I realised my mistake.

When I looked again at the figures when downloading a file it stated MB/sec, I mistook this for Mb/sec so as you say I'm getting a constant 16 Mb/s download speed if I download a file at 2 MB/s.

Many thanks for clearing this up for me.

Glen