Why is upload worse than download?

[Skylarking]

Is there any particular reason why uploading slows down the internet more than downloading? I'm talking major slow like dial up slow. I'm on ADSL2+, if it matters...

[Woffie]

Is there any particular reason why uploading slows down the internet more than downloading? I'm talking major slow like dial up slow. I'm on ADSL2+, if it matters...

When ADSL was designed most people didn't upload very much and therefore, less upload capacity is provided. According to Wikipedia, you have 24 Mbit/s download speed (8 bit is one byte and MB stands for Mega Byte) and 1.4 Mbit/s upload.

From that it's easy to point out that
A: Your internet is probably to slow to play World of Warcraft
And
B: If you upload things there's probably not enough room to ask other servers for things you want to download.

[spacecowboy420]

Generally the upload speeds on your internet package are much lower than the download which is why it destroys your connection it takes forever as you're capping your upload bandwith. Lets take TWC's internet for example, the ultimate 300 package gives you 300 down and 20 up, at which point you will cap by downloading 300mbps or more, where as uploading will cap when you're at 20 or more. When it caps is when you notice speed dropping. I would run a speedtest at speedtest.net and see what your upload speed is, double check it with your ISP and then try to throttle your upload to where it's not going to cap you so you can still have your internet available while uploading. Or upload while you're not doing anything obviously.

[Kagthul]

From that it's easy to point out that
A: Your internet is probably to slow to play World of Warcraft

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lolwut?

WoW uses about 5-6KB per second. That's it. You dont need mega-bandwidth to play WoW (or almost any other online game, few even hit 30-40KB/sec and those are exceedingly rare) - just good latency and you cant be flooding your connection.

[Woffie]

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lolwut?

WoW uses about 5-6KB per second. That's it. You dont need mega-bandwidth to play WoW (or almost any other online game, few even hit 30-40KB/sec and those are exceedingly rare) - just good latency and you cant be flooding your connection.

I might be biased as I'm running with fiber so *Shrug* Sure, WoW is well adapted most of the time,,, But imagine being in a raid/battleground and Windows suddenly decides to upload memory dumps... Or download updates for that matter. You can't just look at WoW's usage on its own, you have to include the rest of the system. And 1.4 Mbit/s with uploading going on? That will tank your download speed to next to nothing.

[Kagthul]

Is there any particular reason why uploading slows down the internet more than downloading? I'm talking major slow like dial up slow. I'm on ADSL2+, if it matters...

The reason the internet is slowing down is because you're probably saturating the hell out of your upstream connection. 1.5Mbits/sec isnt a lot (about 190KB/s, or .2MB/s) - it wouldn't take much to completely saturate that.

When you try to access a website, information goes both ways - your computer has to send requests to the website, back and forth, to get all the information needed for the website to work.

If your upstream connection is saturated, your browser is trying to sneak those packets in between the uploading stuff - causing a huge delay, because it might take several seconds after you click a link for your computer to even manage to get the outgoing request out.

To prevent this, dont saturate your upstream connection. Why are you uploading a lot of stuff, how are you uploading it, and what kind of stuff is it?

[Skylarking]

I've read on google that its best to set a limit of 80% of upload speed to allow overhead for priority packets or something? Well, ive tried that but it seems any kind of upload traffic is indeed enough to tank the whole internet.

[Deleted]

Demand for download is simply a lot higher then demand for upload, so ISPs design their products that way. Most ISPs have around a 10:1 or 20:1 ratio.

Demand for upload is slowly increasing especially from power users but it's gonna be awhile before the masses upload as many cat videos then they download.

[the boar]

perth scotland or perth australia? those are the only two perths i can think of that are commonly known..

what are you up/down rates out of interest?

[Deleted]

With ADSL, you have a specific 'spectrum area' that you can use.

Any part of that area can be assigned for uploading or downloading - but cannot be both. Therefore, the reason that upload is worse than download is that the majority of the 'area' is assigned to download, since that is what the vast majority of users require.

Fibre connections don't work in the same way - and as a result its far more common for upload/download speeds to be equal (since increasing upload won't come at the cost of download).

[Ahovv]

When ADSL was designed most people didn't upload very much and therefore, less upload capacity is provided. According to Wikipedia, you have 24 Mbit/s download speed (8 bit is one byte and MB stands for Mega Byte) and 1.4 Mbit/s upload.

From that it's easy to point out that
A: Your internet is probably to slow to play World of Warcraft
And
B: If you upload things there's probably not enough room to ask other servers for things you want to download.

You have no clue what you're talking about. DSL is more than enough to play World of Warcraft with low latency and no ability lag during raids.

[Gorgodeus]

Demand for download is simply a lot higher then demand for upload, so ISPs design their products that way. Most ISPs have around a 10:1 or 20:1 ratio.

Demand for upload is slowly increasing especially from power users but it's gonna be awhile before the masses upload as many cat videos then they download.

Demand has nothing to do with it. In the US, minimizing customers upload speeds to a fraction of their download speeds saves ISPs tons of money in bandwidth and it means they do not have to spend more money on infrastructure. Outside the US, most places have the same speeds up and down.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

ADSL has a lower upload rate than download rate because people usually download more than they upload. It is also cheaper for the ISP to implement which helps to reduce the cost to the customer.

There is SDSL, but that is super expensive and you don't get 16/16 or higher (usually more like 2/2 - 6/6).

If you need more than 1 Mbit/s upload then you've pretty much only got VDSL or cable.

[Denpepe]

All I know is my ISP (cable)had the same up as download speed in the old days, once their service became more popular and file sharing programs ran rampant they decided to decrease upload to a fraction supposedly to not overload their systems (some people were uploading hundreds of GB/day getting slowdowns on their nodes for other customers) and discourage piracy.

[Ciddy]

Yeah, I'm stuck with this right now:



But there is another ISP in my area now that offers 40up/40down, and it costs a whopping $1 more a month than what I'm paying for the above, which is a no brainer. They just want a big one-time charge to run the fiber line underground from the road to my house, and I can't handle that charge right now. Will be thinking very seriously about it once I get the credit cards paid off though.

I have very few problems playing WoW or most games with the above. That said, there are other people in the house (maybe 3-4 others besides me) using the connection, so it gets stretched thin pretty quickly if everyone is doing stuff at once. But I do most of my gaming late night when everyone else is asleep, so it's usually not a problem.

[DeltrusDisc]

I might be biased as I'm running with fiber so *Shrug* Sure, WoW is well adapted most of the time,,, But imagine being in a raid/battleground and Windows suddenly decides to upload memory dumps... Or download updates for that matter. You can't just look at WoW's usage on its own, you have to include the rest of the system. And 1.4 Mbit/s with uploading going on? That will tank your download speed to next to nothing.

That's why you tell Windows to only do it when you're okay with it doing that.

Problem solved.

[Vash The Stampede]

Your ISP is a dick. That's why.

[chazus]

It's one of two things.

TLDR: For ADSL, it just is how it's made. For Cable, it's software capped to prevent slowing down Download capacity.

For ADSL, the line has a certain band for Download and Upload. (I'm simplifying this greatly) but basically, the pipe is only so wide, and a percent of it is allocated to Down and Up. ADSL2+ caps out at ~24 (or 48 with bonding, ISP capable) Mbps. Upload caps out at ~3Mbps. Worse, distance affects speed as well.

Cable/Fiber is sort of a free for all, as up and down don't affect eachother, and the capacity is high, so they have to manually throttle it so that people's upload rate doesn't affect the download rate.

People will complain about crappy download. They usually won't about crappy upload. Nobody really needs more than 5mb upload, unless they do something that demands it, and if it demands it, they're doing something that they can afford the upper tier stuff.

[Skylarking]

It's one of two things.

TLDR: For ADSL, it just is how it's made. For Cable, it's software capped to prevent slowing down Download capacity.

For ADSL, the line has a certain band for Download and Upload. (I'm simplifying this greatly) but basically, the pipe is only so wide, and a percent of it is allocated to Down and Up. ADSL2+ caps out at ~24 (or 48 with bonding, ISP capable) Mbps. Upload caps out at ~3Mbps. Worse, distance affects speed as well.

Cable/Fiber is sort of a free for all, as up and down don't affect eachother, and the capacity is high, so they have to manually throttle it so that people's upload rate doesn't affect the download rate.

People will complain about crappy download. They usually won't about crappy upload. Nobody really needs more than 5mb upload, unless they do something that demands it, and if it demands it, they're doing something that they can afford the upper tier stuff.

Thanks for the explanation. But im curious as to why uploading makes the internet slow and download doesn't? If i cap my up and down speed at like 300kbps, uploading kills the internet where as download has little to no affect. I'm under the assumption that you need to be maxing your connection for that to happen.

[Ulsaki]

Upload only slows down 'regular' internet browsing when the link is so saturated it can't get requests out. If your connection is saturated by 300kbps upload, that's a ridiculously bad connection, and I find it hard to believe your line is that slow; very few get such slow speeds today.

If your line isn't (or shouldn't be) that slow, it sounds as if something is seriously wrong.