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The State of UK Broadband — Not So Fast
Barence writes "The deplorable speed of British broadband connections has been revealed in the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics, which show that 42.3% of broadband connections are slower than 2Mb/sec. More worryingly, the ONS statistics are based on the connection's headline speed, not actual throughput, which means that many more British broadband connections are effectively below the 2Mb/sec barrier. Better still, a separate report issued yesterday by Ofcom revealed that the majority of broadband users had no idea about the speed of their connection anyway."
Because during my download of Fedora 10, Virgin Media will throttle my connection from 8 to 2 ( mb/s ) and put my ping time ( to Google ) into the 2 second range.
The disappearing pencil trick. Let me show you it.
If the customers are happily oblivious to their slow connection, believing that they are in fact surfing the information superhighway on a souped up Land Rover, then what's the point of trying to tell them otherwise?
Soak them for all they've got.
Concerned as I am with slow speeds, I'm more concerned that I cannot at home get broadband at all because there's insufficient regulation of the monopoly landline supplier. BT is not interested in fixing the twisted pair arriving at my house such that ADSL will work. The UK government is not interested in extending the Universal Service Obligation - the thing that forces the monopoly to connect you to the phone system for voice calls - to broadband.
HMG's insistence that broadband is of economic and social importance is just so much humbug and cant if they will not bother themselves to lift a regulatory finger to ensure that the whole population can access at least a basic service.
Perish the thought that the vast additional profit arising out of millions of DSL connections should be put towards improving the basic infrastructure.
But I can get 2kbps downstream (yup, that's right) through my 2.5 or 3G connection. Yay. I think I was getting better than that on dialup in about 1995.
I'm supposed to have a 8MB connection. I've checked the distance to my DSLAM, and I'm well within the distance that 8M should be possible.
I've got a good modem/router - Alcatel Speedtouch - which lets me run diagnostics on the line. The diagnostics report that my signal to noise ratio is just within the limits to establish an aDSL session (from memory it's 9dB), and certainly nowhere close to being able to run at max speed (which would need a S/N of something like 50+dB).
I've contacted BT about the poor state of my line, and they basically ignore me. Actually, it's worse than that, they lied to me claiming that they have tried to contact me by phone, but I provided only my cell phone number and my e-mail, and there is no record of any missed calls from BT, just an e-mail claiming they tried to call. (not to mention that I always have it switched on and within easy ear-shot during working hours).
I guess they just suck !
British Telecom's capping and throttling strategies make Comcast look like a philanthropy.
There are a lot of advantages to DSL/Cable over dial-up besides speed (always on for instance).
So maybe a lot of people are using "broadband" as a more convenient replacement for dial-up, or as part of a "triple play" package, but actually don't download much and therefore don't care.
If all you use is e-mails, youtube, facebook, and the occasional iTunes download you have no reason to care about speed.
I mean, 8Mbit/s still means a whole album will download in a couple of minutes, I think it's sufficiently fast for Joe Average...
It would be interesting to know how much of this broadband is actually comprised of basic low speed offerings.
I've contacted [any telco anywhere in the world] about the poor state of my line, and they basically ignore me.
There, fixed that for you.
Headline speed isn't everything.
"Unlimited" offers that are actually very limited, FUPs, throttling, packet shaping, off-peak, on-peak, web caching, port blocking, Phorm; - no wonder with all this crap the average customer is confused about their connection.
I will now shamelessly plug http://superawesomebroadband.com/ and get me coat.
Super Awesome Broadband
Maybe because at the moment there are very few applications of an Internet connection for which you'd notice the difference between 1mbit and 10mbit.
Unless you are a habitual downloader (a group statistically overrepresented here on Slashdot), you won't notice any difference to your web and email by moving above 1mbit. Hell, with the intelligent buffering that most video sites have, it's likely that you wouldn't even notice the difference on those sites unless you're really paying attention.
So cut it with the "we need faster broadband" BS. What we need before a 100mbit pipe is a legislative framework that ensures that consumers can actually use that 100mbit pipe without getting shagged six ways from Sunday by their ISP.
I'm looking at you, Telstra.
I hate printers.
You should try think a bit further about what the brittish are in for, when a developed country like theirs has what is actually the worst, most underdeveloped IT infrastructure of all developed countries in the world.
Consistent night and day >6Mb/sec on an advertised 8Mb connection. Bittorrents running at several 100 KiB/sec in the right circumstances. Never been capped, throttled or shaped despite downloading 10's of GiB/month regularly. Who's my ISP ? That evil multinational known as Orange ! They just recently blocked The Pirate Bay but I found a way to ACCESS BLOCKED SITES and all is good once again.
Squirrel!
I have broadband connections in two places. With my 10Mbit headline Virgin cable service, I get 9.6Mbit+ which persists long enough for me to download a Linux ISO. With the 8Mbit headline ADSL I can get about 5.5 Mbit for the same purpose. I suspect some upstream blocking, because when this line first came active, I was getting 7.6Mbit, but I haven't seen that for a year or so.
So you can get reasonable connections in some places.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
bloody pommie whingers
(that's a term of endearment)
Well it's still a lot better than certain countries, for instance Serbia, where the FASTEST broadband connection you can get is only 2Mbit ADSL with an uplink of 196kbps.
They are probably worried about piracy, hence the weak uplink, but for about $70 a month one would expect a decent connection in a country that is supposedly heading for the EU in a few years...
I'm still on their 8MBit package and it's great, always solidly at the max speed with no throttling, but costs a bit over the average at £20 + £10 line rental. They were recently bought out by Pipex/Tiscali but so far nothing has changed, hopefully it'll stay this way! Unfortunately it means you can no longer sign up for a new account with them.
There is considerable obfuscation being performed by UK ISPs on the subject of connection speed.
For example, I have an 8Mb line. I know that this speed isn't theoretical, I can obtain it fairly easily, dependent on the servers I connect to. For instance if the server is on Janet, I'm pretty much assured of 7-8Mb. 5-6Mb is usual, with 2Mb happening some evenings.
However, when talking to several ISPs recently as I was considering changing provider, they all insisted that they had 'tested' my line, and it was incapable of greater that 2Mb. Other people I know have found the same thing.
The thing is, UK ISPs don't want people to think of 8Mb as being a standard speed, they want that to be something they can charge more for. I stopped calling ISPs in the end, because I got tired of the bullshit they were all spouting.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
This is why I get in France with a standard connection :
Attainable bitrate 1365 kb/s (up) 27231 kb/s (down)
ADSL2+ works well!
However, I have now noticed that my router is only allowing ~6Mbit/s through it so I really need to get to a shop and buy a new one. Fortunately the torrent uploads are going at nominal values. I expect to have a Demonoid ratio of 3 later this week. Sad, but it gives me something to strive for.
Posting from my 24mbps connection with pretty much no speed throttling or bandwidth caps (Be Internet) :)
I am living in London however, so I suppose that doesn't make me representative of most of the country.
Yes, I total agree with the article. I pay for 20mbit and yet, when connected to one of Astraweb's servers, using 30 SSL connections, I can only manage to 18.5mbit. I am disgusted. Where's my other 1.5mbit?
Some webpages, even the BBC in the early hours, are slow to _display_. The requesting of 50+ images, loading of a flash plugin and rendering by Javascript all add up. It has nothing to do with a slow connection on the client side. From 5pm til 10pm there is a noticable slowdown on all websites - I still get 16mbit from a decent server.
I had a point at the start and now I've forgotten it. Maybe I'm saying if you want fast broadband, you have to pay for it and you can't expect free services not to slow down at busy times.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
It's fast enough for the purposes I use it for. I have next to no wait for websites to load. Movies download in less time than it takes to watch them. I have plenty of bandwidth for my purposes.
My ISP is great, but I won't tell you who they are because I want to keep the bandwidth to myself. But I get a 30Gb on-peak allowance and a 300Gb off-peak allowance, and pretty close to 8Mbps downloads nearly all the time.
If they cover your area, go with them. I really do get the 20 Mbps (almost) that they advertise.
but-you-have-actual-competition
Not really. Mostly you still go through BT. Many exchanges don't have other ISPs in them. Mine has 1 other ISP in it and that is Sky :(
...and don't even get me started on line lengths...
I'm physically 200 meters from the exchange. Somehow the line is over 2000 meters long...
El Tonerino
I spend considerable amounts of time in both countries.
In Poland I pretty much get the advertized speeds, maybe it's slightly slower in peek hours. Currently I'm connected via cable - 6 Mbps and yesterday's episode of House is coming home almost that fast.
I've lived in two different houses in UK over the past 1.5 years and used the web at friend's house numerous times. Every house had DSL connection (speeds between 6 and 10 Mbps) from different providers. It's decent during the day (I'd say ~3 Mbps), but once everyone comes back home from school/work (~5p.m.) speeds drop to below 512 kbps (web, anything out of the standard ports range drops to a crawl).
How in God's name is the UK Government supposed to keep a record of everything you do online, if you are using these unholy fast speed internet connections ?
True - but then us corporate users who transfer sales & backup data between offices overnight *do* notice the problem.
Our new HQ is quite a long way from the exchange so we struggle to get above 4Mbit/sec anyway - but that's a side issue.
We have 30 satellite offices each running 1-8Mbit connections and we can get the data in overnight but if we wanted anything more 'real-time' we'd have to go fibre - and then we're talking something daft like a 10KGBP+ install to 'upgrade' to a whopping 10Mbit connection *PER SITE* - or get the connections cheaper in return for a long-term contract. Then, you'd need to factor in the monthly rental charges.
Overall, ADSL does what we need - slowly - but the price differential to the next possible speed solution is out of all proportion to the benefits.
AT&ROFLMAO
It's the magic word here.
Does anyone know why SDSL is so hugely expensive? Because they guarantee that speed. With your normal average ADSL2+ subscription you will have an overbooking ratio of somewhere around 25:1, meaning that if your theoretical maximum is 20 mbit, 24 people share those 20 mbit with you... (for a total of 25 :P) Of course, it is unprobable that all those people want to utilize their full speed at the same time, which is why such a construction works, but it is one of the reasons why ADSL(2+) works so badly.
The other reason why ADSL performs so badly is because of line quality. I have read lots of comments of people with phonelines so bad they can barely carry voice signals, let alone some digital signal. Also with ADSL2+ the degradation of the signal rises almost linear with the distance to the DSLAM. This combined with rotting copper and bad connections makes for an interesting 'broadband' experience...
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Low latency and consistent speed can be just as important (or more important, depending on your use) as maximum speed.
I pay $135/month for a 1.5mbps synchronous connection in the United States. On the face of it that seems ridiculously expensive for what I'm getting. But that includes a /28 block of static IP addresses and the connection is *always* that fast. There are no slow times. There are no problems. (The longest "outage" I've seen in the past 6 months is about 5-10 seconds, and that's been 2 or 3 times.)
Of course I wish (like everybody) that my connection was faster. But I'll take a connection that always works and always delivers low latency and moderate speed over one that goes fast sometimes and slow (or worse, fails) other times.
Furthermore, the majority don't care. Ask most of the non-geeks I know what speed their internet connection runs at, and the answer will be "Who knows, I don't care really, as long as I can get the internets on my computer thing I'm happy".
Heck I still know a lot of people who use dial-up, as it achieves their only goal (getting on the internet) for no monthly cost. They don't even begin to think about broadband until a goal such as "watch TV online" gets added to the equation.
As long as there is this level of apathy, there will be very little progress.
I'm happy with my Broadband. I get between 5 and 6 Mbps all the time, which is the best I've ever had. I was with Virgin ADSL before and their service was so poor I even managed to get them to send a letter saying that they were throttling the line. Because of this I managed to get away without paying any cancellation fees, thank God.
The provider I'm with now "only" lets me download 30GB per month peak and 300GB per month off peak, which is more than enough for me since 30GB per month is about 1GB per day which I very rarely hit.
I'd much rather have a limited amount of downloads per month and a fast connection than unlimited downloads and a shit connection.
Anyone else had the misfortune of using Virgin ADSL?
Summation 2
My bet is that these are closely related. If consumers knew about their comparatively low speed connection (i.e., knew enough to know they should care and how to figure it out) then they'd be pushing for faster speeds. They'd leave providers who are providing "slow broadband" and move to better ones, and the screwups would have to get right or get out of the broadband business.
But your average Peter Pint doesn't know enough to know better. (Hey, I'm not putting down you folks over the pond--the average Joe Sixpack thinks broadband is a woman's belt)
Just my two cents
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
We do something similar using rsync over VPN connections to backup data. It is managing just now on the mediocre ADSL connections but the office is starting to scan and store a great number of documents and this could be a problem. A faster upstream speed will soon be required.
After all, with the rate that the UK government is stripping the populace's civil liberties, I'm sure it's just a matter of time before the only thing they'll be able to get over there are government authorized websites. *insert obligatory V for Vendetta reference here*
People who arent savvy enough to know what speed their connection is - well, they deserve to get a crap service. The issue here is unfair and misleading use of capping. I have a BT Business Broadband account - even though the line goes into a residential location, I pay roughly double what a residential customer pays. The fair usage policy that BT rolls out to me once every two months is still activated by home user levels...BT now cap for a month at a time - from 8 meg down to 1 meg. BT think they can do what they like because they are BT. As oon as my contract is up I am goign to go to a different supplier.
In other words, nobody cares.
My bet is that these are closely related. If consumers knew about their comparatively low speed connection (i.e., knew enough to know they should care and how to figure it out) then they'd be pushing for faster speeds. They'd leave providers who are providing "slow broadband" and move to better ones, and the screwups would have to get right or get out of the broadband business.
To what purpose? Are high internet speeds really that good for winning dicksize contests among "normal" people?
But your average Peter Pint doesn't know enough to know better. (Hey, I'm not putting down you folks over the pond--the average Joe Sixpack thinks broadband is a woman's belt)
Just my two cents
Unfortunately, you're probably right. If they did know better they'd go for faster speeds (or not) based on noticing that the slower speeds weren't good enough, rather than marketing hype and your "bigger (faster) is better".
You could always look at bonding multiple ADSL connections together.
I am NaN
Compare this to a country like the USA where even a town with a population of 30,000+ is deemed unworthy of getting broadband by the telcos.
Conor "You're not married,you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never seen Star Trek? Good Lord!" - Patrick Stewart
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24Mbps, static IP address, 19 quid a month.
Sure, due to line quality I only get about 11-14Mbps, but that's ok.
They don't seem to throttle at all, torrenting stuff is nice and fast, as are my frequent OS downloads/net installs. No caps either AFAICT.
Shocking state of British broadband revealed.
latest figures from the Office of National Statistics, which show that 42.3% of broadband connections are slower than 2Mb/sec.
Why should that number worry anyone?
The 42.3% is taken from the average of all the broadband connections, but it doesn't tell us how many of those with sub 2Mbit connections only bought that kind of connection. If, say, half of all broadband costumers only bought a 256Kbit connection, why should we care about the average of all users.
If this was about costumers that bought a 2Mbit, and didn't get what they paid for, your had something to write about, but as the article points out, it isn't.
"The proportion of broadband customers unaware of their connection speeds has continued to grow - 55% were unaware of their connection speed (actual speed),"
If they don't know, is it because they don't notice any limitation when they are online, and hence have more speed than they are using or are in need of? High speed connections are nice, but if you don't use it, it isn't really worth that much.
Nevertheless, the Ofcom Consumer Satisfaction report claimed that almost a fifth of broadband customers were unhappy with the speed of their connection.
Would be interesting to see the speeds of the connections they were unhappy with, how many were over 2Mbit.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
Actually, here in the UK, stuff like BBC iPlayer is getting very popular and seems to have taken off with non-techies and non-pirates.
But your average Peter Pint doesn't know enough to know better. (Hey, I'm not putting down you folks over the pond--the average Joe Sixpack thinks broadband is a woman's belt)
Just my two cents
"Peter Pint" is cool but shouldn't you have said 1 pence or £0.01?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I get 6 mbit/s out of my DSL line. Which is great, until you consider it's a 16 mbit/s line which they reckon can do 8 mbit/s. I don't think I've ever seen 8 mbit/s out of it.
An acquaintance of mine was incredulous, to say the least, on returning to the UK after 15 years in Japan.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
Just stop.
Damn.
> Better still, a separate report issued yesterday by Ofcom revealed that the majority of
> broadband users had no idea about the speed of their connection anyway.
Perhaps this indicates that it just doesn't matter much to them. Hard as it may be for Slashdotters to believe, there are many people who do not regularly download entire operating systems and unauthorized copies of full-length movies.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I think there is quite a lot of content at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ which can consume those 10MBps ... and from what I remember when using it (while I lived in the UK), it is quite easy to use for Fred Bloggs.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
So yesterday the Chancellor announced a massive boost to the economy. Loads to be spent on construction of yet more fucking schools, hospitals and roads.
Not a penny on wiring the country up for fibre. We could have everyone on 50Mb broadband for a fraction of the dosh but once again because we're ruled by failed arts and humanities graduates and lead by ex-lawyers. The one opportunity they have to lay the foundations for a 21st Century economy and we're going to divert money to moving dumb matter around more quickly.
There are still some companies who do good service, I pay £22 for a 24mbit/s download and 2.7mbit/s upload connection plus the usual BT tax of £11 monthly, the exchange is about a mile away and i get effectively 15mbit/s down and 1.3mbit/s upload. and if im luck i can experience full speed. I get usual disconnection and line problems once or twice every 2 months but that can be due to the speedtouch modem which i vener reboot or switch off and 2 PC constantly using it. there are good service providers who do not just focus on getting custumer but keeping them and keeping them happy. Keep serching you might find them the problem is over extending and not upgrading the line and backbone.
I'm fortunate enough to live geographically close to an unbundled exchange (21mbps down and 2.3mbps up) and can actually get that sort of real-world throughput (less ATM and TCP/IP overheads of course).
BT's throttling at peak times is horrible. Additionally if you are a customer of an older fixed rate service and were 'migrated' to ADSLMax you will usually find that BT never bothered to change your profile at the exchange and will refuse to acknowledge any problem: "You are on an up to 8mbps package sir."
Anyway, in summary, the slow ADSL issue in the UK is down to terrible workmanship by BT on most peoples lines, and internal wiring issues causing interference. Be*, O2 and UKonline typically have very good sync speeds.
i believe that 20Mbit down still only comes with 768kbit up, 10x down but only 3x up, and their shaping, and that your unlikely to get 20Mbit, and that most cheap routers wont support that speed etc etc http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html
Seems like every other post in here lately is about UK related ISP's, loss of privacy, big brother type stuff. Seems like you guys are going through the same thing the US did during the early Bush years. Here's hoping things get straightened out over there. As to the slow performance, Joe User doesn't care about something like that. If his favorite sports page, or gaming page pulls up in a few seconds, he (or she) is happy. Realistically, unless you're downloading movies, or downloading from newsgroups, chances are you'll never hit that top speed anyway. My newsreader is the only piece of software I use that actually pegs my connection. Typical Joe User doesn't even know what a newsgroup is. It's very rare when even a typical web download actually comes close. For the non-technically inclined, 2 MB is probably more than plenty. It just doesn't look good on paper or sales pitches.
STFU newbie we need faster
Maybe because at the moment there are very few applications of an Internet connection for which you'd notice the difference between 1mbit and 10mbit.
Unless you are a habitual downloader (a group statistically overrepresented here on Slashdot), you won't notice any difference to your web and email by moving above 1mbit. Hell, with the intelligent buffering that most video sites have, it's likely that you wouldn't even notice the difference on those sites unless you're really paying attention.
So cut it with the "we need faster broadband" BS. What we need before a 100mbit pipe is a legislative framework that ensures that consumers can actually use that 100mbit pipe without getting shagged six ways from Sunday by their ISP.
I'm looking at you, Telstra.
STFU newbie, that's all, have a nice day
you beat me to it. >man rsync
If it weren't for the rocks in its bed, the stream would have no songs.
Maybe because at the moment there are very few applications of an Internet connection for which you'd notice the difference between 1mbit and 10mbit. ...sayeth someone who doesn't live in a shared house, in my opinion.
TBH, with web pages often reaching a megabyte when you factor in the images, I'm happy of any extra speed I can get. Three youtube/iplayer streams is enough to make a 1Mbps connection appear slow. My parents in Wales have a 2Mb line that operates at ~1Mb and when me and my sis are back for winter hols it's painfully slow. Something to do with that law of data expanding to fill all available space - as soon as broadband became widespread, lots of colossally huge pages appeared - ubiquitous flash, ever bigger and more annoying ad banners, AJAX (although this is usually compressed), high-latency links to a billion ad servers per page load (IMHO the real justification for ad blocking).
To be fair, I live in a house of four fairly heavy internet users (no-one uses P2P much but we average about 1GB of HTTP traffic a day, and that's *with* a caching proxy server and judicious null routing of ad servers). We read lots of sites, talk to alot of people, download alot of music and streaming movies. TBH when we're all using the net even the 6Mb we have can feel awfully slow, and this is from one of the UK's better ISP's (Zen Internet).
Not saying that 1Mb is useless, but to me there's certainly a huge difference between 1Mb and 10Mb for my internet/web habits, along with most of my friends, and this is before we even get started on torrents and the like.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
Is there no middle ground? Here in the US we were paying old rates for 4 bonded T1's (1.5Mbps symmetrical connections similar to an EU E1 only slower) and for the same price per month our ISP moved us to a fiber based DS1 (45Mbit symmetrical) with base bandwidth of 10Mbps averaged over the month and tiered pricing up to the full circuit. They did this for several reason, one they got to free up 4 ports on the local router for other customers and 2 they have the possibility of higher revenue in the future (renewal rates on the T1's would have gone down significantly).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/ is a good site for checking exchanges.
Sadly for me, Entanet don't have 8 meg available on my exchange but given that they have no throttling and their caps are well documented (30GB peak & 300GB off-peak rather than "unlimited" but with an undefined "fair use policy") I'm not complaining too much.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
We already use rsync but due to the dynamic nature of some of our large-ish (10GB+ MS-SQL) databases there is still a lot to sync.
Things will improve when we move to a new app that runs of a central, hosted, service but at the mo we have to cope with 25-odd separate databases overnight. Yes, the current app's database architecture/schema/replication is crap but it's also beyond my control.
AT&ROFLMAO
Anybody can notice the differnce between 1 mbit and 10 mbit video. Blu-ray is 40 mbps, and that's if only one channel is being watched. Video on the Internet is THE killer app, and it's just beginning.
Our HQ location is against us for copper-based solutions and as soon as fibre is mentioned we're in the 10K+ territory.
The annoying things is that we share a split office and 'next door' has fibre carrying 12 channels of ISDN-30 AND it terminates in our area - but BT and the third party service provider point blank refuse to run services to two different companies through it - technically it's a no-brainer, but the mere mention of investigating the possibility has the companies in a total brain-fart.
We could come to some arrangement directly with the people in the other office, but that raises its own set of issues, not least because their service contract forces them to use specific kit tied to a telephony contract and also forbids sub-selling all or part of the service provision.
Into the mix will be our move to a hosted app Q1-2 next year and so our focus will shift with regards to where we need the bandwidth.
I've also looked at a wireless mesh/wimax solution as there is expected to be coverage in our area next year - but the provider is quoting a speed cap of around 18Mbit/sec.
AT&ROFLMAO
Maybe because at the moment there are very few applications of an Internet connection for which you'd notice the difference between 1mbit and 10mbit.
Unless you are a habitual downloader (a group statistically overrepresented here on Slashdot), you won't notice any difference to your web and email by moving above 1mbit. Hell, with the intelligent buffering that most video sites have, it's likely that you wouldn't even notice the difference on those sites unless you're really paying attention.
If you are talking about grandma who uses the internet for email or basic web browsing then you are correct. However if you are talking about 2 or 3 family members using the internet for gaming then you are way off.
I'm running 1.5 Meg DSL (because that's my only really good option at the moment) and when we have a couple of kids playing Team Fortress 2 or Counter Strike Source while I'm browsing the internet then yes it's damn slow. Of course that's when they are downloading the latest map update or steam is updating again.
BTW, can you name a single instance during your internet experience where you are NOT downloading something?
It's either a .nav file for CSS or an .html document for your browser. You are doomed to download dude. You hear me. Doomed :-)
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
When I first had broadband, it was 512kb/s. When I moved house I got 2Mb/s at no extra charge, and would probably have been given it previously had I asked! When I moved house again we got 8Mb/s, so it's probably more to do with asking for a higher speed or accepting the speed they used to offer you when you last subscribed. They don't actively advertise higher speeds to existing customers because they're not trying to win you. I suspect most people on 512kb/s now are fully able to go faster if they tried.
Pro Coffee Drinker
I am fed up and tired of BT. I'm on Sky boradband (which uses BT lines) and i'm on their "supposedly" 16Mb/s connection. I can safely say I have never gotten above 1.5Mb/s downstream. My router sometimes goes up to as much as 2.1Mb/s, but when I check that against a website like speedtest.net, I'm still only getting a max of 1.5Mb/s.
There where even two months that my broadband sank to 600Kb/s, an almost unusable connection speed. When I tried to contact BT they spent 2 hours on the phone with me, before realising they had capped my line while they performed routine upgrades (4 weeks ago!) and had not uncapped it since. After uncapping my line, I am now back to my usual petty speed, and, whats worse, is that everytime the landline rings, my broadband cuts out!
Well I for one am moving to Virgin Media soon, the only real service to offer fiber in the UK, so hopefully that'll solve the problems.
The UK needs to get its act together if we're to stand any kind of chance of being anywhere near the top of the world internet leaderboard!
Well they might move to another provider, but still be in the same sinking boat.
Take my girlfriend's house as an example. They used to have BT DSL which topped out at a whopping 1.5mbps (on good days). They have since moved over to Tiscali for various reasons and see about the same speeds. Tiscali sells their particular package up to 8mbps, but they will likely never see speeds like that.
Apparently the problem is with the exchange, but may also be the last mile of copper, who knows? It's highly unlikely it will ever be fixed, so they just have to deal with it. It all works fine for them because they aren't power users (web, email, occasional iPlayer), but it would still be nice to get what you paid for. They could be paying for 24mbit but wouldn't likely see more than 2mbit. I'm sure her area isn't unique in the UK.
In australia there's VDSL over copper, 25 meg down & several up. Why hasn't UK got this yet? It has been about for a few years now.
Make sure you use a business ADSL with "up to" 830Kb/sec upstream, however ...
You ought to still be able to get good old fashioned 2Mb E1 lines for a lot less than 10Mb fibre. (and I'm not talking about SDSL either - "proper" 2Mb leased lines). You may even be able to get a distance independent deal, so bring a 2Mb line back to corprat HQ from each remote site - sure, it's not "fast", but I guess 2Mb upstream would be much better than 400Kb upstream as far as backups are concerned. (Still keep the ADSL at each site for general Internet access though)
in deed. also, one has to remember that it's not just applications that drive technology/infrastructure, but technology/infrastructure also drives applications.
BBC has sorta taken it upon themselves to be a technological leader and trendsetting influence in the modern information age. this has been demonstrated in their sponsorship of the bbc.co.uk:Reboot competition a few years back, their BBC Backstage developer network, their promotion of open industry standards and continual support of open innovation & "public-spirited developers and designers."
promoting technological progress is part of the BBC's mission statement and "long-term transformational strategy." other companies don't embody the same idealism and are primarily concerned with their bottom line. in such general cases, they aren't going to develop an application making use of high-speed broadband until there's already widespread infrastructure to support it.
you don't ever have to worry about providing more bandwidth than people can use. people will naturally make full use of the technology available to them. their usage, and even lifestyle, will change to adapt to new technologies. people never really traded movies or ISOs online until broadband DSL & cable became widely available. likewise, streaming media content didn't become popular until broadband made such applications practically possible. obviously you can't take advantage of technology that doesn't exist or you don't have access to. so we're not going to see very many applications relying on 10Mbps connections until such speeds become standard.
I have a fiber cable connection and I seriously doubt that 2 megabytes per second for large files happens very often. It is not just the cable companies but slow servers on the other end that cause the problem. Only once in a rare while can I download a large file at 8 megabytes per second. What I do not understand is the technology that allows a file that is 8 or 10 megabytes to download so quickly at times when other times are slow.
A lot of users intentionally buy slower services because they're cheaper, and they wouldn't benefit from the faster services anyway...
Also some of the slower services have no usage limits, while the faster services tend to have pretty small bandwidth caps. Using a 512Kb connection you could pull down 150GB/month if you ran it flat out all month, and you don't need to worry about hitting your cap. With an 8Mb connection you will typically get a cap of around 50GB, so a third of the total achievable on a 512K connection.
Infact, 8Mb with a 50GB cap is not 8Mb at all, it's actually 170Kb burstable to 8Mb.
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Depends where you are, in the middle of big cities like london you can get a dedicated dark fibre for about 15k/year (less if you commit to 5 years) over which you can run anything you want, so you can throw 10Gb down it if you have to.
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We're about seven miles from the exchange.
Fastest we can get (reliably) is about 1.5mbps.
Didn't stop us being forcibly upgraded from our "1.5 mbps" service to the bright and sparkling "8 mbps" service...
Now it seems the router/exchange tries really hard to get us value for money and the connection is more unreliable than before. Lost packets... high latency.. (Someone will point out that BT blocks unreliable slow connections down to something like 140kbps- yes, happens frequently).
I'd rather pay for the old, "slower" service.
(I'd also point out that the average person on Facebook wouldn't know the difference between 1mbps or 8mbps)
http://blog.grcm.net/
BT are particularly bad here...
If you have kit in a commercial datacenter, most carriers will install a distribution router into the DC and connect their customers to it...
BT will want to run separate lines into the DC from their local exchange for every customer, insanely inefficient and far more prone to breakage since each customers only has a single line... With the distribution router method it makes sense for the carrier to connect a handful of high speed lines to it, so a single one breaking won't have much effect.
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Or you can find a smaller provider who will sell a "slower" service for less money and possibly provide more ancillary services or better support etc.
Why pay for an up to 8mb service when your line can only handle 1.5Mb? go for a cheaper 2Mb service.
Also, Tiscali and BT consumer are two of the worst ISPs you could have picked, they are both mass market isps catering to the lowest common denominator. These ISPs will try to pack as many customers onto the smallest connection they can, safe in the knowledge that for every customer they lose there's 10 more who aren't clued up enough to notice. Tiscali for instance, may have 50 "up to 8mb" users connected to a single exchange, which has a 2mb backhaul connection...
Have a look at beunlimited (now o2) or some of the smaller but more highly rated isps on adslguide.org.uk, and avoid the big mass market ones like the plague, they are the mcdonalds of the isp world.
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How is the UK going to read its citizens emails if they have ungodly fast connections creating all that pesky noise? Stuff takes forever to filter after all...
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
I think you have possibly underestimated the growth of non-geek usage of iPlayer, 4OD, Sky Player and other source of high quality legal video downloads?
I was recently surprised to learn a lot of my non-geek acquaintances and family members use at least one of these services. One guy has even noticed his free upgrade to 10Mbit ADSL and the associated decrease in time to get episodes.
We 'murder' our business broadband providers connection, its always doing stuff, the problem is with flash developers and those Microsoft 'users' with silverlight soon to incur every bodies ire.
The thing with us is that provided it works we don't care about the speed.
So 'Flash' developers and silverlighters - we dont have a high speed connection just for your crap alone, you have to share the bandwidth.
To make things tolerable we use flash blockers and ad blockers. Life's great here
If you want fast get adsl 2 from bethere. I had an appaling time, my connection was supposed to be 2mb but I got less than a 56k modem since I've switch to bethere I get 14mb (more than a MB per second download!). The only catch is you have to use their own kit which isn't that great but does the job.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
It's a chicken and the egg problem. I assure you if everyone had 100mbit(both ways, thanks) plenty more use would pop up.
Take Steam for example. Right now I own plenty of games that aren't installed on this machine. If I wanted to play them, I'd have to tell steam to download them and then wait between 2-4hrs to play. If I had enough bandwidth, this task would be instant and I would essentially have the entire steam library at my disposal.
Same with movies. Why own dvds when at the touch of a button you could start watching any movie in an online library? We're close to there already with netflix on demand and similar services, but a lot of people dont even have that kind of bandwidth(and I assure you 1mbit is not enough), and then theres upgrading to HD..
The only thing 1mbit is enough to stream is really compressed video, or good music. Look at services like Real's Rhapsody where you pay a monthly fee and have 'unlimitted' access to all the music you want. Thats possible over 1mbit, but as you scale up to larger things you certainly need more bandwidth.
Maybe because at the moment there are very few applications of an Internet connection for which you'd notice the difference between 1mbit and 10mbit.
Bullshit. On a 10 megabit connection a 200k webpage downloads in 0.2 seconds while on a megabit connection it takes two whole seconds. Add half a second to both for tcp handshakes etc and the difference is still noticeable.
"Joe Bloggs" is the Brit equivalent of Mr Sixpack :)
Puta que pariu! (no idea about parent)
I'm with BE and I get a 17mbit connection. Apart from a DNS hiccup last month, the service has been fantastic, and I can always download at the maximum speed. I also have decent pings, usually within the 10-30 region. My upload is 1.3mbit - ample for what I need it for.
Point is there are great ISPs out there, it's just easy to fall into the trap of purchasing BT's convenient (but extremely poor) service.
I don't get it. The UK is so small, they should be wired end to end with fiber already. Why are they still having such incredible bandwidth problems?
It often sounds like third world nations have better internet than Britain...
The reason they went with Tiscali is that BT actually disconnected them due to a deplorable, abhorrent and disrespectful customer service boondoggle. They then signed up for Tiscali because of a kick ass phone plan and also because it was cheaper than the garbage BT plan they were on. For £20 (includes line rental) they get up to 8mbit DSL (1.5-2mbit in practice) and unlimited calling (up to 1 hour per call, but you can hang up and call back) to a list of 50 countries, Canada included. Since that's where I live, she can call my landline or cell any time at no cost to her other than the monthly bill, which is comparatively nothing. Calling rates to the UK are pretty standard, but she spends more time on the phone to me than anyone locally.
My DSL alone (reliable ~6mbit down, ~550kbit up, no throttling/DNS injection/caps) is $42.95/mo + tax, never mind the phone line, voice mail, calling features, $15 unlimited long distance in Canada/USA only, etc.
This Tiscali phone plan has been great for our relationship because we can talk on the phone as if it were a local call. They would probably switch if Tiscali murdered a kitten every time someone visited Google or something, but in all honesty it works and it's cheap, and they're paying not me.
Sorry, I would have joined the conversation earlier, but being in blimey o'l England, I was still waiting for the page to load.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
10kGBP per site is hardly huge in the grand scheme of running a company so clearly you've made your decision that what you have is "good enough". Next time you move HQ, do some research as to where to locate if your data needs are so high.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I just moved to London from Sweden, back in .se i had 100Mbit connection at home for about 30GBP per month, now i can get ADSL2 with speed of 6MBit(!!!?) for a higher price... i had ADSL2 in Sweden before and got about 24MBit..
this country still need lots of development, right now the status is.. single glas windows, ugly girls and slow broadband.. thats the UK
I'm loving the speed of my ADSL from Sky - I was basically left no choice when my wife insisted on Sky+ (pay TV) and for a tenner a month (pounds, not dollars) on top of my payTV bundle I get truly unlimited (no fair usage policy) ADSL.
It's fast, I can flatline the link at 880KB/sec (and I'm only sync'd at 8Mbit/sec) almost all hours I've tried (even "peak" hour in the evenings) - so I'm happy.
Did I mention I live 20 miles outside a major city in a small, almost semi-rural town? Gorgeous.
"the majority of broadband users had no idea about the speed of their connection anyway."
The companies are hoping, for obvious, financial reasons. People start getting savvy, they start making reasonable demands for better QOS. Heaven forfend, we should get what we pay for!
Maybe because at the moment there are very few applications of an Internet connection for which you'd notice the difference between 1mbit and 10mbit.
Unless you are a habitual downloader, you won't notice any difference to your web and email by moving above 1mbit
With 1mbps you cannot get a proper TV signal through your ADSL connection. With 7mbps+ you can watch one SD channel. And I'm not talking about YouTube but about 100+ real national TV channels on 24h/7. With 10mbps+ you can watch HD TV. With 14mpbs+ you start can watch two SD channels at once which is actually nice if you have a few teenage kids. With 20mbps+ you can do the same with HD channels.
No I'm not talking about science fiction here but triple-play. Stuff that has been around for years in France, is taken for granted by many non-geeks and can save you on the order of $50/month (by dropping your redundant cable subscription).
Of course there's countries where one cannot even dream of getting a TV signal through the ADSL (USA, UK, etc). But that's not a good reason for putting in snide comments about 10mbps+ only being useful to 'habitual downloaders'.
A bit of perspective here...
Before we see too much whining about broadband speeds in the UK, we might as well consider other parts of the developed world such as Australia, where despite a generally tech-aware mindset, speeds of only 256K are common in some areas, while other areas have no access at all.
From my own perspective of one who is primarily a city-dweller (with a nice fat DSL2+ connection at home) but who spends half of the week about 160km away from home, the situation is pretty bad. Until a year ago, the rural place only had satellite access at a nominal 512K which turned out to be more like 128K downstream only. Believe me, I have used Skype more or less successfully on a 56K dialup connection, but it is utterly impossible with satellite, since the upstream latency is a total show-stopper. Now we have 512K ADSL (luxury!) we consider ourselves fortunate.
But I refuse to whine. There are lots of places in Australia where you can't even make a phone-call, let alone play on the internet.
I get a CONSTANT 5 Mb. Friend of mine is getting 20Mb - my exchange will be updated next year to 20Mb.
My company is negotiating with a telco for a 1Gb for next year... yes, GIGA bit.
And this is not even a big city (75,000 people) :-)
Eat your heart out.
If you've got any names of service providers that are offering this kind of deal I'd be very grateful if you could send them my way. I've been looking into various options to get some serious bandwidth into our London office and the best I've found so far was almost £30k a year for a 100Mbit point-to-point metro ethernet link.
I'm quite serious: I'm dealing with British Telecom, and getting a support call to actual engineers who can possibly do something is a 3 day process, consuming at least 5 distinct phone calls to different Indian phone centers, none of whom believe that I've already gone through all their procedures, all of whom want me to 'reboot my Windows box', 'try plugging dirrectly into the backup connection', etc., etc. The problem is intermittent, and definitely upstream, but since rebooting the modem can restore service for a little while as long as I don't actually attempt to use the 8 Mbaud bandwidth, their 'line checks' show nothing.
The last time, they finally visited with a technician with equipment, he verified the problem, and they proceeded to shut me down for a week because they screwed up the switch to a new segment. I don't dare touch it again, because I'm leaving the country and need to do house hunting, and the first steop of any switch in provider is to disconnect you for 10 days while one provider 'unlocks' the connection, and the other 'claims' the new connection. I have never seen such a bunch of people happy to wait in line, get crap service, and not switch providers. I swear, they learn it from the National Health Service, where you show up, wait all day, they each take a medical history, all throw them out, and sit you down with the nurse who knows nothing about anything more complicated than a Band-Aid tells the doctor, who may be competent but who learned English in New Delhi, is not allowed to spend any money diagnosing or doing anything not on the approved list of first-aid box medical procedures the local 'primary trust' will fund.
They're not trained, they don't know the fields they're expected to provide support for, and no one dares cut them off lest they lose the little service they get. The movie Brazil has become completely clear to me since moving here, and I'll be glad to get the hell out. *SIX MONTHS* to plan the meetings and get the approvals to install a new datacenter monitoring system, with not a single member of the 10 person review process who will actually use the new system? And none are allowed into the process? This country is insane!!!!!
They notice: they just don't dare switch. BT owns the Telco's as a national company, and are bloody awful about actually switching things for the ISP's who use the DSL services. It's a 10-day disconnect, *if you're lucky*, to switch provider, with no ability to speed things along, even if you speak the native language of the call center operators in India. (Their English is noticeably better than the Brits, fortunately, but speaking Hindi can help get past the 30 minute script designed to let them pretend the problem is on your end and they have 'fixed' it when you hang up on them and go away.)
Try http://www.geo-uk.net/
There's some others too, but i dont have their names off hand
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I have an ADSL connection with a really small company called Upstream Internet and they provide a great service. They specialise in bonding two or more ADSL lines together for bandwidth and do a pretty good job if you have to raise a fault to BT on something.
I think that the smaller companies have such a much better track record of service to customers than the big, faceless monster companies like BT and Virgin/NTL. Definitely worth looking into.
640kb....
Awww, who am I kidding?