Thread: Quick Question About Download Speeds.

mbps & mb/s are the same thing, just a different way of writing the division
same as MPH, or M/H

You are getting 5.36 Mega-bits per second on the down-stream (from elsewhere to your machine)
and 0.53 Mega-bits per second on the up-stream (from your machine to elsewhere)

So, if you are paying for a service "up to 5 mbps", then you're getting slightly over your advertised down speed, which is good

As for the far lower up speed, this is fairly normal
and is what the 'A' in ADSL means
Asynchronous communication means one direction has more bandwidth than the other
(as opposed to an SDSL line, where both directions have the same bandwidth)

Consumer broadband providers assume (rightly) that most people download more than they upload, hence the bandwidth bias towards the down-stream

$30 (around £20) for "up to 5 mbps" does seem expensive
I pay that for 12 mbps (bearing in mind different country, exchange rates, yadda yadda)