Why cap download speed?

[xcellerate]

So i notice that occasionally i'll start a download and it'll be like 700-1000kb/sec and for like 5 seconds it'll jump 10% but then the speed drops, to around 200kb/sec and it takes me 5 minutes to download a file that would have taken 42 seconds earlier.

I realize they cap the download speed so more people can have room to download, but if they let me download at unlimited rate then i could be started and done in less than a minute instead of sitting there for five; which takes up the same space for longer.

Why do websites cap the rates? It seems to me like it would be worse, 200 people at a time, each downloading 200kb/sec for 10 minutes; or 75 people downloading at a time, each downloading 800kb/sec for each 1min 27sec.

 

[63]

They want you to pay for that speed. Yeah, you're probably right in that it would be more efficient to have no caps so = less lines, but then nobody would pay for 'insider accounts' or whatever.

 

[Krynn72]

It would decrease traffic to their site because it would be much much harder to get a connection since only a very limited number of people can download at once.

 

[Asus]

If they did not in some way set limits then other people would get timeout errors. I'd think that would be pretty frustrating.

 

[RakuraiTenjin]

Your DL rate doesn't do that because of caps, it does it because IE starts downloading it while you're selecting which folder to save the file in.

 

[Viperidae]

WTF? 1000 kB/s? I'm lucky if I get 80...

 

[63]

lol! You must live in Canada! eh!?

 

[Viperidae]

lol! You must live in Canada! eh!?

lol!

Noob.

 

[sinkoman]

I believe they'd end up paying rediculous bandwith fees if everybody was allowed do Download files uncapped, not only because of the server stress, but because of all the people who would be rapidly comming in and out of line.

 

[Gorgon]

pay more, its a money monkey bussiness.

edit: in sweden you can pay £30 for 100mbit ..... UK with 100mbit would be around 2010