why does having 1000mb/s of download speeds doesn’t translate to actually downloading things at 1gb a second

Question

It’s still super fast, but a 60gb download should be in the ball park of 1min but it frequently would take 10-15min

Edit: I have symmetrical 1GB fiber connection with a router specced for WiFi 7. I did mess up the abbreviation for megabytes, my bad y’all.

Edit 2: I may have messed it up again. IM 5 YALL

Edit 3: bit vs byte 🥵🌶️

In: Technology

Answer 1

First off: Bits vs bytes.

Data rates are in multiples of bits per second: bps (minuscule b)

Volumes are in multiples of bytes: B (capital B)

1 byte = 8 bits.

60 GB would take 8 minutes in a gigabit (per second) connection.

Then you should take into account that in order to do that, the whole chain should support that speed: the server (reading for the disk and the network), all the intermediary routers and your computer (writing to disk). If it cannot

After that, there are the network protocols. Downloading a file usually means TCP. TCP controls how much data can be “in transit” by means of small messages that tell the sending side that a part of the data was well received. If some information is lost, the rate at which the data is sent changes .Think of it as a phone call where you can’t properly understand the other person and you ask them to repeat the last sentence.