I’ve just run a speed test on by home WiFi connection (BT Homehub) and the test results are as follows:

Test1 comprises of Best Effort Test: -provides background information.
Your DSL connection rate: 6144 kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP profile for your line is – 4000 kbps
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was – 3627 kbps

Why is there such a huge difference in upload and download speeds and is there anything that I can do to change it?

Ta very much.

It’s what the ‘A’ in ADSL stands for.

Asymmetric.

Nothing you can do about it other than switch to Virgin.

because your service provider is betting you do more downloading than uploading.

No point allocating pipe that youre not going to use.

It’s how it works. They do that based on the fact that most people download 1000s of times more stuff than they upload.

Most of the time you won’t be using much of your upload bandwidth as most internet traffic goes like this:

UP: “Can I have this web page please?”
DOWN: “Sure here is 4000 characters of text…”

UP “Okay got that. Can I have this image please.”
DOWN: “Sure here is 5MB worth of image file….”

UP: “Okay got that.”

In other words the DOWN is generally many times bigger than the UP, because the UP is generally just asking for stuff and saying “Okay” when it arrives.

Hence why ADSL was developed to be Asymmetric.

The only time it sucks is when you need to upload some photos or something.

Nothing you can do about it other than switch to Virgin.

No different for Virgin IME.

All is well here:

You must be downhill from the telephone exchange. If you lived higher up than the telephone exchang it’d be the opposite way round. That’s why most telephone exchanges are on top of hills, saves BT a fortune.

It’s what the ‘A’ in ADSL stands for.

Asymmetric.

Actually it’s Asynchronous

</unneccessary pedantry>

You must be downhill from the telephone exchange. If you lived higher up than the telephone exchang it’d be the opposite way round. That’s why most telephone exchanges are on top of hills, saves BT a fortune.

Hahaha 😆

Actually it’s Asynchronous

</unneccessary pedantry>

It’s Asymmetric, technically speaking it is synchronous technology, just as all the other posters pointed out, the data rates are asymmetric.
</even more unneccessary pedantry> 😉

Yes, it’s asymmetric (digital subscriber line). However ADSL does use Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) as the data link layer between the home and the exchange. </even more completely irrelevant pedantry>

As others have pointed out, ADSL was designed as a consumer product where the amount of downloading usually far outweighs the uploading.

“Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) is a form of DSL, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide.”
— http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADSL

EDIT: never mind, the other pedants beat me to it 🙂

BTW, the asynchronous in ATM doesn’t actually mean it’s asynchronous :-), it just means that it’s packet based rather than switched circuit.

technically speaking it is synchronous technology

Actually in digital comms terms it is asynchronous, even if that’s not the word in the acronym.
</uberpedant>

Just think full of “user generated content” cruft the internet would be if upload speeds matched download speeds.

Thank God for the ‘A’ in ADSL I say 🙂

Now, to offer some helpful advice – by switching ISP you can double your uplink speed from the nominal 448kbps of “standard” ADSL to a nominal 832kbps. If your exchange is “unbundled” (check http://www.samknows.co.uk), you can even get this with some of the cheaper ISPs such as TalkTalk. I use a more expensive provider (adsl24) as I work from home and rely on “business grade” broadband and with their their “office” tariff and get 8Mbps down and 832kbps up.

But if you get a higher upload speed, it’ll reduce your download speed by the same amount.

Say your line supports 4meg, you could theoretically have any combination of upload and download speeds, to a total of 4meg. So they arn’t screwing you, just providing what the average user needs.

You must be downhill from the telephone exchange. If you lived higher up than the telephone exchang it’d be the opposite way round. That’s why most telephone exchanges are on top of hills, saves BT a fortune.

I Lol’ed.

Why is my uphill speed way slower than my downhill speed?

Thanks all, very clear.

The reason I asked the Q was that I was indeed uploading photo’s and videos which were taking forever.

Oh well. It’s a waiting game then.

Different wavelength?

Mines 1.3mb upload and 14mb download average.

Speed tested at 1.1mb and 11mb at lunchtime only £17.50 too.

Old wiring in the house stop it running at 23mb as it becomes unstable even though I’m near the exchange.