So the internet speeds and Speedtest.net say I have a 30MB/s DL speed.

But when I actually DOWNLOAD stuff, I'm capping at a max of 5MB/s? I don't get that. No one else is on the internet at all, I'm the only one.

Why do I not get 30, but 5?

Speedtest displays speeds in the same format as your ISP does megabits. 30megabits = 3.75 megabytes

Speedtest isn't very accurate and if your getting 5 megabytes download speed then you have a 40 megabit connection.

You probably have speedtest set to tell you how many Megabits/s you are getting (Mbps).

When downloading you are noticing how many MegaBytes you are getting.

You have to divide the Megabits by 8 to really tell how many MegaBytes you are getting. (30/8 is around 3.75MB/s). You could be seeing the burst speed when you see it peak at 5MB/s.


Edit-It seems like this question has been asked a lot on the forum recently.

It hovers around 3.8 to 4.8, but yeah. Ok well I guess that answers my question!

Because network speeds have historically been measured in bits.

Files have historically been measured in bytes.

There are 8 bits in a byte

(30 Mbit/s) / 8 = 3.75 MiB/s

You're actually getting above your speed

There's an option to change it to *bytes per second.

Most consumer Internet connections can vary quite wildly. I often get 10Mbit over what I am contracted for. It's completely dependant on how many other customers are utilizing the Internet in your area at a given time. All consumer Internet is oversold.

Never noticed that. It is still rather inaccurate though as it tells me i have 9.7 but it's actually 16.

It's not inaccurate at all. See my edit. Also, it tells you the precise speed you get to a given routable end point at the given time. There are about a million factors that go in to determining your speed to a given server. SpeedTest is no more accurate or inaccurate than any other place. Try a different server and you'll most likely get a different result.

This is the way the Internet works (quite literally, the Internet depends on "burstiness" in order to function, otherwise it'd be much more expensive like long distance calls used to be, because traffic across a line would be constant while the line was in use).

I've tried them all and none of them are accurate. I can download files from most places at 2 megabytes per and that matches my ISP package speed of 16mbps.

....
There's hundreds of SpeedTest endpoints all around the world, somehow I doubt you've tried them all.

If you were to try a speedtest endpoint in the same general vicinity as a server you normally download from, you'd most likely see comprable speeds.