Is the trasfer rate display very accurate? I was downloading a 70K file from my site at about 1K/2K /sec and it took about 17+ seconds. But my page generator used the following formula to automaticaly calculate it (when I type in the size) :
time=(size*1024)/4096;
Where time is the time in seconds based on 4KB/sec connection. It calculated 17.5 which is right of course but it took me that time at 2K/sec! Is Windows also stupid enough to use the 1000 byte = 1KB base? I used the right one in my calculation: 1024bytes = 1KB.
Also, this has nothing to do with this but why is it that any character is 1 byte but an ENTER is 2 bytes??? Makes me think for a while there!
The transfer rates are notoriously innacurate especially on small files. I can download ~8megs in 15 mins at the blistering rate of 1.6 Mb/s. Try to calculate that one.
As far as the 1000b = 1kb I don't think it does that but the 1680 byte difference could not possibly account for the 17+ second difference in the times.
sc is correct, that status bar is not much more than eye candy, something to keep you entertained while waiting. also keep in mind that data transfered is sent wrapped up in packets that have packet headers etc. which creates overhead and adds to the total amount of data actually being transfered.
Happy computing!
Alex "crazygerman" Byron Webmaster, Editor-in-Chief PC911
Thanks so really, the bigger the file, the more accurate it is. As long as my calculation says a bigger size, it's ok since I rather it take less time then expected then more if I was downloading any software. Ether way, my software is all small files since my server only allows that I think. I changed servers so I'm not sure yet. I hope there's no limit so I can get better more featured software introduced. My biggest software is about 1.5MB and only available via my dial-up computer (which is not connected more then 100hours/month!)
