Thank you for the detailed explanation. It makes sense why the ISP can most easily measure the network bit speed, rather than the speed or bandwidth of services carried on the network.

It still isn’t a very useful measurement for a layperson customer. In other industries, regulations exist that make it easier for the customer to place the data shown to their real world use of the service. Which in your metaphor might be “how much stuff can I send through the postal service”, rather than “how big is the postal truck?.” I get that this is a harder question to estimate for, but it is the more useful question to answer for the customer, and questions like these are answered in other industries.

For example, cars are sold with EPA-mandated miles per gallon estimates. Appliances are sold with energy star ratings. They are not perfect estimates, and everything from wind resistance to road quality to driving style is going to affect miles per gallon. The car company might prefer to share the thermal efficiency of the engine, or the rolling resistance of the stock tires, which they have more control over rather than the messy real world miles per gallon. But this isn’t very useful to know for the customer, who will be driving in the real world.

If I fire up btop and I run two speedtests at once, I can measure what Mbps I am getting when my connection is maxxed out, and compare that to the speed the ISP quotes. If we convert that to megabytes (or mebibytes if you prefer) per second, and apply a scaling factor to represent the packet overhead, you could arrive at an estimated maximum megabyte/s file transfer speed, which would be more in the ballpark of what a customer would see when they fire up Steam and try to download GTA VI, which is 250 GB.

Packet overhead varies depending on the protocol (I read this for reference: https://linuxvox.com/blog/what-is-the-optimal-size-of-a-udp-packet-for-maximum-throughput/#overhead-when-extra-bytes-eat-into-throughput) but since miles per gallon also varies based on multiple factors, I think giving an estimated max download speed is fair.

I don’t see what the downside would be to have the network speed listed in Mbps like always, and also give an estimated file download speed for reference.

Nice!

If the file is downloading at 112 megabytes per second, how is the link maxing out at 125 megabytes per second?

If it is 100% why is it 90%?

It’s not some reason, the reason is that file transfer uses bytes.

Hiding it is anti-consumer.

What good is it that i can reach the local node in 1000Mbit/s if their first hop to an internet server slows the connection to 90%?

If i upgrade to the 2500Mbit/s connection, am i only getting 90% of that too?

They should advertise what internet service they’re really providing.

There were so many games, just not AAA titles

At the upper end of that range, you are only getting 90% of their advertised bandwidth, even in ideal conditions. Is that actually an acceptable loss? Maybe they shouldn’t advertise 125 mb/s if they can only deliver 90% of that in the best case.

Routers, network cards, and Ethernet cables being “gigabit” or similar is also confusing, but i see your point there.

I still don’t see the harm in providing both formats, thought i do see the point in not switching to mb/s only.

In the example you posted, it would be 1000Mbit/s down, which translates to a real world speed of 110-112 mb/s .

Funny you say that because some sites just don’t work in librewolf, which is because it is protecting you, but still adds to friction.

Vivaldi is pretty nice though

Zdr?

This is all i found in Wikipedia

This work introduced Dahl to espionage and the activities of the Canadian spymaster William Stephenson, known by the codename “Intrepid.”[82] During the war, Dahl supplied intelligence from Washington to Prime Minister Winston Churchill. As Dahl later said: “My job was to try to help Winston to get on with FDR, and tell Winston what was in the old boy’s mind.”[79] Dahl also supplied intelligence to Stephenson and his organisation, known as British Security Coordination, which was part of MI6.[77] Dahl was once sent back to Britain by British Embassy officials, supposedly for misconduct—“I got booted out by the big boys”, he said. Stephenson promptly sent him back to Washington—with a promotion to wing commander rank.[83] Toward the end of the war, Dahl wrote some of the history of the secret organisation. He and Stephenson remained friends for decades after the war.[84]

Follow up, is this rate limited by the link from your home to their local node primarily, or from their local node to the broader internet?

Elsewhere in the thread it looks like some ISPs do exactly that! Not sure why you are against the mb/s estimate.

Edit: thanks for the detail re: Mbit in your other answer!

I still think an estimate of Mbit/8 e.g. mb/s would still be a more useful thing for consumers to compare to the download rates they’re actually getting.

The first speedtest I ever used was from the ISP and gave results in Mbit – which confused 12 y.o. me because I was not getting anything close to that when I downloaded files.

If the speedtest said 1 mb/s and then I got 0.8 mb/s downloading from a server, I wouldn’t call ISP support, but I think we did call support when the speedtest said we were getting “10 M” but our downloads were closer to 1.1 mb/s.

Best of luck! I suspect you’ll have to find out which kernels support your hardware, but the other commenter seems to know more!

Let’s say the computer you want to use is only supported in an older kernel – do some of those get back-ported security patches, or to you need to air gap it from the internet?

How is the Mbit number an accurate value? In my understanding it was also an upward bound of an estimate

Why wouldn’t it be possible? Convert Mbit/s to a reasonable real-world mb/s estimation for download/upload to a reasonably close location, with some losses built into the estimate.

What is the procedure for running antique hardware on a modern distro?

I agree broadly, but how do we know he isn’t being paid by ARM for this work?

To me that reads like a semi-common rhymimg suffix to make “gone” rhyme with garbanzo.

Something unrelated: gonzo journalism is a thing, bit I dont know what it is and I don’t think that is the reference here.