Bandwidth for non-techies
Or, 'Why is this server so slow???'

I've gotten a number of e-mails asking why the server is so slow to download, so I'm going to attempt an explanation here.
Every connection to the internet has a "pipe", that is, an inlet and outlet. This "pipe" has a certain size, and different connections have different szized pipes. Your average 56k dialup is called "56k" because it can download 56,000 bits a second. It varies, but it tends to max out in real life about 5 kilobytes a second. In comparison, your average mp3 song is about 3,000 to 5,000 kilobytes. In other words, it would take about 10-15 minutes to download an mp3 at best possible speed.

Along came broadband like DSL, which is what I have. It's maximums are about 150 kilobytes a second down and 38 kilobytes up. I personally tend to get closer to 27-30 kilobytes a second up. This is where you come in. Whenever you're downloading from me, you're using my upstream to get it from. Even 38Kb/s doesn't go very far with the traffic levels this site gets. Most "real" servers have connections 10, 100, even 1000 times as fast. Unfortunately, these fast connections are very expensive, so I have to make do with what I can offer.

To prevent the server from getting so bogged down as to be useless, I have limited 7 connections to 5Kbps. This means if 7 people are connected, and getting the full speed, it'll be using most of the upstream of my connection. It fits quite nicely. If there are fewer people connected or people aren't getting the full 5, it means there's some bandwidth left for me use ;)

Anyway, I hope that was clear enough. Thanks for listening to my rambling ;)

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