Is their a limit to how fast my computer can download?

I can download at 2MB/s, but I was wondering if I were to upgrade to a hypothetical higher download speed plan (lets say 100 MB/s). Will my harddrive be able to take that download speed? If not, how do I determine the most download speed my computer can take?
Answer #1
Its all up to your ISP. You’d have to go to your ISP’s website and see what plan you have.
Answer #2
Yes … If U pay For premium speed u get 3-4mb download speed.
Well thats in Oz .. Optus that is..
Answer #3
Get some software to see how fast your HDD can read/write. I’m on a 120mbps line and I have a crap PC but I can download at around 16MB/s.
Answer #4
You are confusing two very different things!
Internet connection speeds and HDD transfer rates are NOT in the same category!
Megabits/Gigabits (Network/Broadband speed terms) and Megabytes/Gigabytes (Storage capacity & Transfer rate terms) are very different. In Network/Broadband speeds, The speed is NEVER as-is (You divide it in 8 for that!)
So a 100 MBPS connection is 12.5 MB/s effectively (Actual, Maximal speed) so your HDD won’t have any issues keeping up with it!
Answer #5
You are confusing two very different things!
Internet connection speeds and HDD transfer rates are NOT in the same category!
Megabits/Gigabits (Network/Broadband speed terms) and Megabytes/Gigabytes (Storage capacity & Transfer rate terms) are very different. In Network/Broadband speeds, The speed is NEVER as-is (You divide it in 8 for that!)
So a 100 MBPS connection is 12.5 MB/s effectively (Actual, Maximal speed) so your HDD won't have any issues keeping up with it!
You would NOT divide by 8 since the bandwidth has already been given to you in megabytes (MB). The reason you normally divide your rated speed by 8 is because most people want to know how many bytes instead of bits a second they can download. If your ISP tells you that you have a 100 megabit (abbreviated as “Mb”) per second connection you would divide that number by 8 to find out how megabytes (abbreviated as “MB”) per second you have. Why? Because there are 8 bits in one byte the same way there are 12 inches in 1 foot. So while you have two different numbers they are the same amount just using two different scales.
According to one review the Western Digital Black hard drive, a high performance consumer drive, writes around 140 MB/s so even a 1000Mb/s (which can also be written as 125MB/s) would not be bottlenecked. However, if youre in the US I dont think anyone except Google offers anything like those speeds and only in small experimental areas so your 100MB/s bandwidth is not a possibility anyway. The most bandwidth Verizon offers is 500Mb/s (also written as 62.5MB/s) for a whopping $300 a month, a far cry from the OP’s 100MB/s (also written as 800mb/s) scenario.
Answer #6
I don’t think you would get a dl speed faster than your pc would read.
Answer #7
You would also have to factor in whether or not the site will cap your download speed.
Answer #8
I can download at 2MB/s, but I was wondering if I were to upgrade to a hypothetical higher download speed plan (lets say 100 MB/s).
Unless u haven’t the intention to install multiple networkcards connected to different ISPs u will not run into speed problems. Nevertheless there are situations that can reduce your download speed by local hardware.
For example the downloader in my virtual machine drops from 50kB/s ( uploaded.to free user ) to 12kB/s
if I am moving files from the host computer to another computer. This belongs really to the slow harddisc which have to do multiple things simultanously. ( VM management, downloading, file copy )
Answer #9
I can write a movie file to a mechanical HDD at 175MB/s, so it should be all good for downloads, bearing in mind what said..