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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."
...for a FP?
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
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 ?
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.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke last Thursday at a Natural Resources Defense Council event held at Google offices in New York. The topic for the evening was "Partnership for the Earth: Strategies and Solutions for Energy Security." Eric spoke about Google's Clean Energy 2030 plan and the importance of rebuilding America's energy infrastructure.The speech was followed by a panel discussion featuring Frances Beinecke, President of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Ralph Cavanaugh, co-director of NRDC's energy program, and Dan Reicher, Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives at Google.org.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
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...
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.
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...
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!
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.
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!!!!!
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?