Starband Speeds by Ron Williams

Starband said I could see 500K downloads. Why do I only see speeds of around 40 to 50 K or less?

The speeds you're getting may be more (or less) than what you actually think you are getting. Pay attention to whether it says Kb or KB. Little "b" is bit and big "B" is byte. The promised 500 Kbps (Kilo-Bit...) converts to 62.5 KBps (Kilo-Byte) If you are getting 30 KBps, that works out to 240 Kbps. Here is a quick conversion chart so you can see where your rates fall: Speed Conversions 500 Kbps = 62.5 KBps   60 KBps = 480 Kbps 400 Kbps = 50.0 KBps 50 KBps = 400 Kbps 300 Kbps = 37.5 KBps 40 KBps = 320 Kbps 200 Kbps = 25.0 KBps 30 KBps = 240 Kbps 100 Kbps = 12.5 KBps 20 KBps = 160 Kbps 50 Kbps = 6.25 KBps 10 KBps = 80 Kbps   Some programs will display your transfer speed one way, say Kbps, while others will display it the other way, KBps. You just need to look for the rate. Internet Explorer uses KBps by default, as shown here:   Here, during a download from Microsoft, the transfer rate is 26.2 KBps, which is 209.6 Kbps.   Some programs can be configured to display the transfer rate either way. WS_FTP Pro is a good example of this. From the Options menu, you have the option to choose your display as shown here: Then, you can see your speed in whatever way makes you comfortable.      Currently, most transfer speeds for hardware devices are listed using the little 'b'. This is true for modems, ethernet cards, USB devices, etc. Modems being sold today are 56 Kbps. Hey, if they were 56 KBps it would be as good as Starband. The USB bus (in it's current 1.1 spec anyway...) is 12 Mbps. That's Megabits per second. When the next version of the USB spec is released (Ver 2.0) the bus speed is supposed to increase to 480 Mbps. And Ethernet is either 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps, depending on what speed card you want to buy.   Now, that might lead you to think that using the USB cable instead of the Ethernet port on the Starband modem would be faster - 12 Mb vs. 10 Mb. Not so, for a couple of reasons. First, 12 Mb is the theoretical top end, and that's on a 'shared' bus, meaning any other USB devices will take their chunk from the same 12 Mb - Not counting any overhead used for trasmission. Second, the USB card inside the modem simply plugs into the built in Ethernet circuit. And that circuit is only a 10 Mb Ethernet connection anyway. And, even if you could go faster than 10 Mb, you can't download from the satellite that fast anyway. 10 Mb will be more than enough for the satellite link for quite some time. Now, having a 100 Mb between all the computers on your network will make transferring files between them a lot faster, so I still recommend getting 100 Mb cards for the computers if you are setting up your own home network, but they aren't going to make a difference on your transfer speeds to or from the Internet since at its advertised best Starband is still a tick short of a half of 1 Mbps. (Half of 1 Mbps would actually be 512 Kbps because 1 Mbps is really 1024 Kbps)   So, if you are only getting half of 1 at the best of times, arguing over 12 being better than 10, even if it is only theorectical, is not really worth the effort.