Downloading a 500 megabyte file

You can add your own comment here. So what I can gather from this unless your house hold is in excess of people then you will not see any day to do benefit from moving from a mbps broadband to a mbps broadband? The age of the slower broadband provider is coming to an end, in fact, as far as Lowestoft is concerned, that age is now over because Ultrafast Fibre is here, Gigabit broadband is now a reality in the town.

I shall be connected to the Gigabit service in just 2 weeks time and I shall have a mbps connection, a massive step up on my current BT Infinity service. I am one of the lucky ones living in a cabled area and signed up for mbps. I am less lucky though in that, whilst it may be possible in theory to get this kind of service, in practice it is often in the mbps range and sometimes even achieving 0mbps.

Many others in the area experience the same but the ISP refuses to accept there is a problem. They simply suggest that we pay yet more for a higher service but without providing any guarantee on what will actually be delivered. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Please let me know by e-mail when there is a reply to my message. Contents 1 How Fast Is Mbps? Pro Ultrafast EE Fibre Max Fibre Data Only. Sky Ultrafast Plus. M Fibre. Full Fibre Superfast 2. Super Fibre. Superfast Fibre Plus. Fibre Unlimited Fibre Extra. EE Fibre Plus. Fibre Extra. Fibre 2. Your Comments 4 so far We'd love to hear your thoughts and any questions you may have. Bill said: November 19, at pm. Graeme Claridge said: May 9, at pm. Denise Hall replied: February 17, at am.

All we need to do is upload our file to the internet. Then, to access our file, people have to download it to their devices. Uploading and downloading data can take a while, depending on the file's size and transfer rate. Think of it like pouring water into a beaker. Pouring water from one beaker to another will only take a little amount of time. However, if we place a funnel on one beaker, the amount of water flow will decrease due to the narrow part of the funnel.

The flow rate of the water in this analogy is similar to the transfer rate of a file. We can compare a funnel's narrow tube part to what is called the internet's bandwidth. The larger the bandwidth is, the more data that can be transmitted at a time. Therefore, a file can be transferred much faster if the internet connection has a larger bandwidth. Bandwidth is also, in a way, an internet connection's maximum capacity, and we can express it in units of bits per second.

Internet bandwidth can also represent the maximum speed an internet connection can have. However, when moving a file from one computer to another, the maximum transfer speed will depend on the slowest bandwidth that the data has to go through - which can be anywhere in the route. To better understand this, let us consider an example. Let's say that your friend wants to send you his new MB megabytes video creation over his 10 Mbps megabits per second internet connection.

On the other hand, you will be receiving the video file over your 5 Mbps home internet connection. For this example, let us assume that the upload and download speeds for both connections can use their entire bandwidths.

Since the file will also be coming through the much lower 5 Mbps connection, this will be the maximum transfer speed that we can get for this data transfer. But, to determine the upload and download speeds of your connection, you can use any third-party speed test applications that can be accessed online through your browser.

Now that we know how to determine the transfer speed for our uploads and downloads, we can now calculate a file's download time or duration. Calculating download time is as simple as dividing the size of the file you wish to transfer by the transfer speed of the network that the transfer will go through. However, we have to be careful with the units we use, since this could be quite confusing.

Let us consider the example above for our sample computation. To calculate how long to download the MB video over a 5 Mbps internet download speed, we can use the equation below:. But first, let us convert the units of the file size in terms of megabits, which is equivalent to 1 million bits. To do so, we'll be using the conversion table above under the SI system. With that said, we now have this computation:. As shown above, the MB video file will finish downloading in less than 11 minutes over a stable 5 Mbps connection.

However, if somebody else in the house uses the internet while you're downloading this video file, it could take much longer to complete the download because of congestion in the data transfer. Aside from calculating the download time of a file from the internet, you can also use this calculator to determine the transfer duration from, let's say, a computer to an external storage device like a USB flash drive.

However, you must first know the transfer rate of your connection to calculate the transfer duration. You can also use this download time calculator to determine your download speed. However, for this, you have to time how long to download a particular file.

Then, by entering the file size and the download time in our calculator, you'll be able to calculate your internet's download speed. If you want to determine the actual time your download will take to complete, you can input the estimated download time into our time duration calculator.

Our time duration calculator will help you determine the actual completion time of the download. Embed Share via. Table of contents: Understanding computer file sizes Why we download computer files Upload and download speeds How to determine download time Download completion time FAQ. Understanding computer file sizes Computer file sizes vary depending on the amount of data or information a computer file stores. Why we download computer files Files cannot always be in just one computer or machine.

Upload and download speeds Uploading and downloading data can take a while, depending on the file's size and transfer rate. How to determine download time Now that we know how to determine the transfer speed for our uploads and downloads, we can now calculate a file's download time or duration.

Download completion time If you want to determine the actual time your download will take to complete, you can input the estimated download time into our time duration calculator.

FAQ What are the factors affecting download time? The download time for a file depends on two factors, which are: File size; and Speed of your internet connection.

How to estimate download time for data? To estimate download time: Find out the internet data speed. Note down the file size.