Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mytime]

I was in a pc room today and downloaded a movie and it was downloading at 500-600kb's and I was wondering if I buy a notebook what specs i would have to look for to get similar speeds?

I basically just use my computer for internet, downloading stuff and watching streaming video online
With the old notebook I have now it takes about 5 hours to download a movie that has many seeders and streaming video isn't very smooth-running

Can anyone tell me what specs to look for in a new notebook for my requirements?

And also is 1gb ram necessary or will 512mb be sufficient?

[SuperHero]

download speed is dependant on your internet connection. I've got a 3 year old desktop and I get 5mb/s or higher.

[TTC]

Superhero is right, PC rooms generally have a kick-arse internet connection because they need to maintain good speeds for 30odd computers while everyone is playing WoW or downloading movies etc.

From what I've seen in Korea, a standard cable connection has a theoretical limit of ~10mbit downstream and 1mbit upstream. In downloading speed terms, this means you can theoretically download at 1Megabyte/second and upload at 100kiloBytes/second.

In reality though, your connection is limited by many other factors including the protocol you're using (how are you downloading? torrents? limewire? direct download? etc) and the upstream capacity of the server/person(s) on the other end.

I've downloaded at over a 1MegaByte/second with cable in Korea. But that was downloading from clubbox (from a server in Korea). Most of the time, using that connection for torrents or other things was pretty much useless.

My connection is vDSL and is about 12mbit downstream (1.2 MBytes/sec) and 400KBytes/sec upstream. I can (and do) hit these top speeds consistently - but once again, the way I'm downloading helps.

xSpeed.com seems to be offering 100Mbit symmetrical connections (~10MBytes/sec download and upload - IF THE OTHER END SUPPORTS THIS SPEED (unlikely)) for ~30,000 won/month. But the chances of being able to get that connection everywhere in Korea are slim. In a standard apartment building in Seoul, you've probably got a good chance of it.

As superhero said, the computer doesn't make much difference at all.

[mytime]

thanks a lot
yeah the thing is my upload and download is about the same at home, so i guess its not my computer's fault
But my 70kb/s is slow isnt it?

[thebum]

[mytime]

Yeah i'm using bitcomet in the pc room and back in my house and there is a huge difference between the download speeds of the same file
In the pc room its between 300 and 500 and at my house its between 50 and 100
Does the speed of my computer matter?
I have an old notebook (pentium2, 320mb)

[corroonb]

I have a 10 mbit cable connection and I can only get around 100 kbps on single downloads from outside Korea but I can have 8 or so of these simultaneously so I'm getting between 800 kbps and 1 mbps. Also Flashget dramatically improves the speed of any direct downloads that I make. I don't use torrents as my connection doesn't support them. I download from file hosting sites which are a viable alternative if you can't use torrents or get decent speeds.

Your hardware has absolutely no impact on connections speed, the connection speed is separate. A new notebook will not speed up the connection at all. You should upgrade your broadband package if you want faster download speed. This would be very much cheaper than buying a new notebook

[TTC]

A notebook that old will have some impact on your speeds.. it'll have some impact on anything you try to do. Only because it can't handle a lot of operations at once. If you're downloading a torrent and the application is trying to handle upwards of 50 TCP/IP connections with remote machines, plus doing all the disk reads and writes associated with the torrent, plus using all your ram for packet downloads before it writes it to the disk, plus you're trying to browse the internet or do other general computing tasks, then something's gotta give.

A better computer would allow you to handle more stuff without noticable strain on the machine. Things should be snappier and you can theoretically handle more bittorrent connections, allowing faster speeds.

Yes, upgrading your computer might improve your speeds, but it's not guarateed to.

Also, check the settings of whichever client you're using, most of them that I've used set a really low number of simultaneous connections, while your comptuer is old and fairly crap, with a better computer, if you crank up the numbers (both incoming and outgoing connections - provided your bandwith allows) then speeds should increase.