My internet connection is fiber to the cabinet (FTTC). I receive around 75 Mbps down, 20 Mbps up. This is what was advertised, and what result I get when using a site such as speedtest.net. However in the real world, when downloading a file (such as a game on Steam) I only see around 10 Mbps. I also see this speed of around 10 Mbps when transferring files across my network. The ethernet ports on my router are 10/100 Mbps. Would this be what is causing the slow internet download and network transfer speed? Do I need a router with gigabit ethernet ports?
Notes: Everything is hard wired with cat 5e (under 2m), or cat6 (under 25m) cable. Both computer motherboards support gigabit ethernet.
75mbps will be around 10MB/s so you probably just haven't realised it's a different unit. On a 100mbps network you would get around 12MB/s transfer speeds so that's about right too.
@Dexter_Kane is correct. Steam shows speeds in MBps not Mbps (bytes, bits) ISPs advertise speeds in Mbps so on steam and similar, 75~Mbps will show up around 9.3MBps(MB/s)
A byte is 8 bits. I don't think getting a gigabit router will improve your internet speed as 75mbps will work fine over a 100mbps network. It will of course improve your local network speed for file transfers.
A bit isn't 8/10 of a byte, it is 1/8 of a byte. A byte is 8 bits. And yeah, a gigabit network will only improve your local network speeds, especially considering that from the sounds of it you're getting the speed you're supposed to be getting.
The weird sets of numbering is because computers work in binary essentially.
A bit is a single piece of info 1 or 0. A megabit is 1000000 or 1 million bits, so 75mbps is 75 million bits per second.
In computers the next unit up from bits is bytes. there are 8 bits in 1 byte. So if you want to know how many byes you can make from your bits your divide by 8.
So your connection is 75,000,000 bits per second. In bytes per second that would be 75,000,000 / 8 which is 9,375,000 bytes per second or 9.373 mega bytes per second (MB/s)
just for clarification on the bits bytes kilobytes, megabytes etc 1 bit = 1 bit 1 byte = 8 bits 1 kilobyte = 1024(1000) bytes 1 megabyte = 1024(1000) kilobytes (or 1000000 bytes)