Expert: Cezar L. Palconet - 4/5/2011

Question
Hello, I have a question about my internet connection.
I was wondering why only a small portion of my connection is ever used while browsing or streaming music.  Today according to task manager, I had a 6 Mbps connection yest only 2 percent was ever used and pandora kept stalling.  I've noticed in the past that my connection never is fully used.  Is there a way to use all of my network connection?
Thanks
Ryan

Answer
Hi Ryan

Internet data transmission are asymmetric in nature, meaning you send a small portion and receives a download which is much larger than the one you send, I am not very sure about, task managers ability to determine actual traffic, but I assume it was averaging total traffic, which is what, probably is happening.
Your connection to a service provider is a shared resource, meaning that the total capacity of the provider are shared among subscribers, you may have a 6Mbps connection, but if the resource availability at the time is only 2Mbps that is what you will get, however that is not constant there will be some time when the connection and traffic permits you can have the full available bandwidth, keep in mind that the allocation of 6Mbps are not entirely dedicated to data traffic, it also contains redundancies and traffic control data and some of that may be lost during transmission, and thus will occupy another space during next transmission, which by the way may have another value for the resources.
many Internet subscriber share your predicament, sadly there is no device that will make your experience any better.

regards.