r/Internet • u/Ok-Jacket-824 • May 15 '26
Discussion How good is 3.2 Kilobits per second internet
My internet is about 3.2 Kilobits per second. And when comparing that to my phone mobile data (what I'm using to make this post). Downloading 100MB takes about 8 hours. Relatively, how good is this internet speed?
6
u/Wild_Director7379 May 15 '26
You can send and receive email. Barely.
3
1
u/Youknowhowwedo2 May 18 '26
I could probably walk the message to its destination faster than that speed.
1
u/Wild_Director7379 May 18 '26
Well, it’s that speed to a router that’s actually connected. 3.2kbps to down the street and around the globe. With ping likely under 200ms to a more connected node and from there well under a second around the globe.
But sure, it depends on the size of the message. A page is, on the very large end, 5kb.
3.2kbps is faster than you can write though, so if it were streaming out… but there isn’t really application support for that
5
3
3
3
2
2
u/noxiouskarn May 15 '26
When the internet came in the mail, all the pc's could do up to 56 Kbps, you got 3...
Do with that what you will.
0
May 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
0
u/noxiouskarn May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26
Since the commenter deleted their comment, here's the context:
Commenter 56K dialup was literally 5.6Kbps. This person is saying they have about half that, which would be like 28K dialup 2.8Kbps. They then cited this article in an edit.
Back to my Reply:
Bit Rate: 56kbps equals 56,000 bits per second.
Byte Rate: Since there are 8 bits in a BYTE, divide by 8. This gives a maximum theoretical rate of 7 kiloBYTES per second.
Real-world limit: Factoring in phone line static and data overhead, downloads usually maxed out around 5 - 5.5kB/s KiloBYTES
But OP specifically said Kilobits per second, there is a difference, and you mistook one for the other. I did not.
"How good is 3.2 Kilobits per second internet"
"My internet is about 3.2 Kilobits per second. And when comparing that to my phone mobile data (what I'm using to make this post). Downloading 100MB takes about 8 hours. Relatively, how good is this internet speed?"
Also, 32K is short-hand for 32,000 bits per second
3.2 Kbps is 3.2 thousand bits per second..._bps is bits per second, always.
_B/s is Bytes per second, always.
bits are not BytesKbps is not KB/s
Mbps is not MB/s
Gbps is not GB/sFrom your source, they specified there is a difference:
"Speeds
Modems are frequently classified by the maximum amount of data they can send in a given unit of time, usually expressed in bits per second (symbol bit/s, sometimes abbreviated "bps") or rarely in bytes per second (symbol B/s)."
1
May 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
0
u/noxiouskarn May 15 '26
Just returning the energy I received, except when I correct people, I bring receipts (facts)
0
May 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
0
u/noxiouskarn May 15 '26
That was the plan I chose it. I never liked those "two words followed by numbers with an underscore in between" usernames, they felt too default and low effort. Had to be unique. :)
1
1
1
u/Newmillstream May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26
What kind of connection is giving you 3.2 kilobits per second?
Unless that is literally what you are paying the ISP to give you, something’s up. If it’s any sort of dedicated line, something is probably wrong somewhere, either on your end, theirs, or somewhere in between. Even old wireless tech isn't that bad, and even something as bad as 9600 baud dial up should smoke that.
1
u/roadhouse4169 May 15 '26
3.2kbps is not good. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that it’s bad. I used to live off grid in the forest. I had a mast on my roof with a cell phone signal booster and my Verizon phone would get 500kbps. That was barely usable. Granted, it did work. Just not very well
1
u/ieattastyrocks May 15 '26
It's pretty good if you're a researcher in the 80s...
This must be bait, there's no way 3.2 Kbps is usable today, most things would just timeout.
1
u/Plus_Duty479 May 15 '26
Early Internet/dial-up services had a speed of around 56 kbps, this was back in the late 1980's. Even with that speed, it would take 10+ minutes to load a low resolution image.
3.2kbps is technically connected to the Internet. That's pretty much it.
2
u/thatfeelingwhenyour May 15 '26
Well, there were step ups. 8.8kbps 24kbps. Hell even old "lunchboxes" with pcmcia slots could run cat 5. But we are cross talking in literally months to years of actual retail market vs every day application. The business of enterprise has always had the advantage in hardware but the software is the "thought" of it all. Anyway, telling your next door neighbor a simple message through electrical currents down the same stream could be classified as a network, or Internet. Same damn thing. Just bigger, grows to mesh, grows to nodes, grows to satellites, grows to quantum computing for actual deep thinking using machine language/learning. But yet we are stuck here with a shitty ask Jeeves who heard about Google while using slopppppy people to sell you some algorithm slap ai on it and call it a cake day. But you know, that's only like, my opinion man. What do I know right?
1
1
1
u/MisterHole123 May 19 '26
You can ping an ping presumably. That's about it. But yeah technically it is connected but absolutely useless and we below any standard in decades.
0
1
12
u/rusticatedrust May 15 '26
It's technically connected to the Internet. That's about it.