- Newbie question
- Posted by Davemon on February 23rd, 2005
I've just got a 'Home500' connection, which is supposed to give me
speeds of up to 512Kbps, but my (new windows XP) PC reports I'm getting
576.0kps. Has WinXP just added 64kps for the fun of it?
- Posted by Bob Eager on February 23rd, 2005
On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 08:32:11 UTC, Davemon <nospam@nowhere.no> wrote:
The 576 is the raw bit rate and includes 'administrative overhead'. When
that's taken off, the actual *data* transfer rate is 512.
- Posted by Davemon on February 23rd, 2005
Thanks Bob,
That certainly helps (I was thinking I'd broken the laws of physics or
something).
Just out of curiosity, what would 'administrative overhead' cover? is it
on the DSL-line, or is it a PC thing?
Bob Eager wrote:
- Posted by Bob Eager on February 23rd, 2005
On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 09:28:23 UTC, Davemon <nospam@nowhere.no> wrote:
In general terms, the raw data has to be put into packets for
transmission over the network (actually, it's already in packets when it
leaves your PC, but it gets wrapped in another layer; a good analogue is
your posted letter, that gets packed into a sack, that gets packed into
a van...!)
Those packets need headers, etc. to indicate their source, destination,
etc. That's the overhead..extra bytes to do that.
