I know that this has sort of been covered before but I was wondering, are the HLS downloads more dependant of upstream speeds than the RTMP downloads are? When I download over RTMP I get at best about 1MB/s. HLS is noticeably faster with usually about 2 or 3 MB/s. However, from what I've heard, I should be capable of downloading faster than this. We have a 60Mb connection with 3Mb upload speeds. If I've worked this out right then I should be able to get around 6MB/s. SP has said before that he can download at the full capacity of his internet connection which I think he said was 200Mb? Dinky has said before something about upstream connections causing downloads to be slower. So I'm trying to work out if the slower download speeds I'm getting with HLS are something to do with the 3Mb upload speed not being big enough or something like that. I can't imagine that the HLS streams would be that demanding of the upstream feed but I might be wrong.

Anyone got any ideas?

As you surmised, your upload speed should not be a factor. You would notice significant pauses in the download if your connection was slow to post HTTP requests or make DNS lookups. 3 MB/s is nothing to sniff at, and you can't get what your upstream pipeline won't give. Downloads could be throttled anywhere along the way.

I suspect the issue is network latency or reliability rather than raw bandwidth.