I don't know the speed, but several years ago I was visiting one of the minor hubs that routes internet in the area... Everything was pretty much instant. It wasn't as big as I imagined either... It was just like, a big tower the size of a refrigerator, and then there was a normal computer and tower on a desk in the same room and that's what the guy used.
It was probably Napster that he was downloading from at the time... this would've been when it was like, the first real sharing thing and was actually good. I guess that means it was somewhere around 1999-2000.
The stuff he was doing seemed really impressive at the time, but I knew nothing about computers or the internet back then. He was bragging it up, making it seem like a big deal too though. Like files that were queued, he'd make them force start, and he made a really big deal out of it, making it sound like only he could do that... lol
But yeah, I dunno. It must've been a really fast connection there.
The biggest numbers I've ever seen were probably two copies of AIM and sending a file to myself on the same network. The numbers must've been broken, because it had some ridiculous number. Like 2147483647 kb/sec or something probably, I don't remember. But, it would've been impossible anyways... I just remember it being really huge and thinking that would be crazy.