sayerbloke Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 Just one in five broadband users receive the speed that they signed up for. That's shockingly bad! But, sadly, also all too believable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChadW Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 Well my local supposedly better 'urban area' is terrible, only get about 2MB on my supposed 16MB connection with SKY. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gren Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 Not meaning to hijack this thread but how does the up to 16mb work? I'm on 1meg at the moment and am tempted to go to 'up to 8meg' Max. From what I can gather I will get around 3meg. Does that mean I will get 6meg on the 16meg service or will I still only max out at 3? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AZURES3 Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 I have the BT total broadband package with speed up to 8mb, I am quite near the exchange and regularly get 6-8 Mb download speeds That is when the Homhub is not rebooting itself Broadband by cable such as VirginMedia should provide the advertised speed regardless of your distance from the equipment. AZ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarMad Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 You should get a faster speed then 3mb with the higher broadband potential speed but what I don't know. Those that get speeds above 8mb are ADSL2 connections and are meant to offer better throughput at longer distances. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChadW Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 [ QUOTE ] Not meaning to hijack this thread but how does the up to 16mb work? I'm on 1meg at the moment and am tempted to go to 'up to 8meg' Max. From what I can gather I will get around 3meg. Does that mean I will get 6meg on the 16meg service or will I still only max out at 3? [/ QUOTE ] If you are using a BT Line then it all depends on your local line and exchange being upto the job. BT are being the weakest link here and I absolutely despise them for it, SKY in theory could deliver me upto 16mb but their hands are tied, still think they could do better themselves though, perhaps lowering the price to those who do not acheieve the expected speed or sommat. A free SKY HD box would not go amiss either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger_Irrelevant Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 oh dear... oh dear oh dear oh dear... Soapbox time... I'll try to keep it short... All of these ADSL Max products are contention based. That means there is NO guaranteed level of bandwidth in the contract. The key words are UP TO 8Mb. There are, at last count, a millionty factors that will determine the download speeds you achieve. Line quality, and distance from the exchange are two of the biggies, but there are others... like, how many people on your area's infrastructure are also caning the internet 24/7 There's loads of info about this searchable on google people... get the knowledge! LinkyDoo! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChadW Posted June 22, 2007 Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 But if you can prove that you NEVER get above a certain figure and you are on say the 16mb package then the Trade descriptions act must come into it at some point. 'Up to' for me means that you cannot go above it so they assume you will get near enough, liars! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shao_khan Posted June 22, 2007 Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 I'm on an Upto 8mb package and get 2mb max - next street they get 512kb max!!!! The wordign is just right to prevent trade descriptions ever being interested. Upot 8Mb* - with so many disclaimers that you would never get anything to stick. The main point is that I believe a lot of them offer a minimum though - mine is 1536 - if it drops below this then they will do something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rachel Posted June 22, 2007 Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 I have a VDSL 2Mbps/512Kbps package, and today I'm getting 8.4Mbps/460Kbps instead. I don't think I should complain about the small drop in upload speed! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChadW Posted June 22, 2007 Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 LOL all our bandwidth is dropping through the earth by the sounds of it then! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rachel Posted June 22, 2007 Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 Maybe, or maybe I'm trialling the stress testing of a new provisioning configuration as a "friendly" to the telco. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger_Irrelevant Posted June 25, 2007 Report Share Posted June 25, 2007 [ QUOTE ] The wordign is just right to prevent trade descriptions ever being interested. Upot 8Mb* - with so many disclaimers that you would never get anything to stick. [/ QUOTE ] Correctamoondo! [ QUOTE ] The main point is that I believe a lot of them offer a minimum though - mine is 1536 - if it drops below this then they will do something. [/ QUOTE ] This tends to be discretionary by each ISP. Typically, all they 'have' to act on is a situation where your connection (or rather router sync) rate is so low that it repeatedly drops the connection. This will only happen after the threshold drops so far that the router will attempt to initially connect at noddy speeds (all these services are rate adaptive don't forget). Then you get the inevitable horror stories thus... 10 PRINT "ISP - it's a problem with your line call BT" 20 PRINT "BT - your line's fine it's a problem with your ISP" 30 GOTO 10 To answer the point about people's bandwidth dropping through the floor... In this country we're pretty much on the same telecomms infrastructure we've been on for donkeys years (if you exclude the switchout of analogue for digital exchanges). Now think about how much more prevalent internet use is today than it was even 5 years ago. Now think about the types of connection packages we were being offred 5 years ago... Tony the smarm made a huge deal about "everyone in the UK being on broadband by 2XXX" (whatever the date was) in order to get elected, but has done diddly squat to address the truly biblical amount of investment and funding that would be needed to upgrade the infrastructure to make this happen. The results? 1) BT come up with ever cleverer dodges to cram more and more traffic down a phone line (ADSL is a VERY clever way of doing this by the way) 2) BT sell cleverly marketed broadband packages to people who then say "yeah I've got 8 meg" when in actual fact they only ever get 256k but don't know the difference 3) BT & ISPs try their damnedest to nobble the 10% of internet users who utilise 80% of their capacity, by means of fair usage policies, traffic shaping, capped down/upload packges etc. To give the uninformed masses a fair shout at using the web at reasonable speed. The next generation infrastructure is on the way. But trust me, it is a truly HUGE project, it won't happen overnight, and you can bet your bottom dollar ultimately it'll all need paying for! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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