The Internet Myth: Connection Quality and Speed (Europe vs US) *spawn*

5000 seconds or one hour and 23 minutes.

Cheers

 

In the US it is retively uncommon to have a hard cap on someyhing that isn't 3G/4G. Thpugh they do exist usually with telecom's as opossed to cable provides. However Soft caps are relitively common in that after a certian amount downloaded they start throttling your connection.

 

We must go past 10GB in a day fairly often, streaming TV and movies. Cable is good for no download cap.

 

Not bad. I expect it's over 50Mb due to the comcast "speedboost" stuff, where they give you the first few megs of a file at uncapped rates.

I've had Business DSL (~100/month), Business cable ($105/month, not including TV), and now home cable (For $82 a month, including TV). Been pretty happy with the home stuff, although I did almost exceed the 250GB limit a couple of times.

Certainly a far cry from the 64kb connection with 300 second ping times to the US that I had in 1992. (Mudding was an exercise in Zen those days)

 

I just had Comcast Xfinity internet installed recently....went with the midrange "Performance" tier. It's way more than I need yet is cheaper than the crappy weather/signal sensitive Clear 4G WiMAX that I briefly had.

 

We'd see a completely different policy on caps if cord cutting was becoming pervasive.

 

I'm paying for Cox's 2nd cheapest tier & I'm suppose to get 25Mb/s download & 5Mb/s upload. Unfortunately I need a newer modem to take advantage of it. Anyway, here's what I got on the test...



I'm in a tiny suburb of the 2nd largest city in Arkansas: For Smith. Feds consider my county rural still.

Tommy McClain

 

Wow AzBat, you must still be using a really old modem, as any DOCSIS 2.0 modem should be capable of at least 36 Mb/s. You might want to check with the local COX office to see if they have any free cable-modem upgrades. In the Cleveland area they were offering free modems if your existing cable-modem was old enough, just so it was easier for them to manage on their network.

I was running a Motorola Surfboard 5121 (DOCSIS 2.0) and maxed out the powerboosted tier at 26 Mb/s. I then upgraded to a Motorola Surfboard 6141 since the old one was becoming stubborn when trying to access the logs/interface. Then a couple weeks later they did a silent bandwidth upgrade to 50 Mb/s (63 Mb/s boosted) from the 25 Mb/s (36 Mb/s boosted).

I picked my SB 6141 up for $58 with shipping/handling from a vendor ISP (AdvancedStream). The price might have changed since then, https://www.advancedstream.com/49modem [SlickDeal Thread: http://slickdeals.net/f/5973874-Mot...Modem-49-95-tax-5-30-shipping-for-59-95-Total ].

 

I've got a Scientific Atlanta DPC2100r2. Supposedly it's a DOCSIS 2.0 modem, but Cox has been wanting me to upgrade(not free) to a DOCSIS 3.0 modem so I can get full speed. No idea why I'm not getting 25Mb/s unless my modem is so old(about 4.5yrs) it needs replacing.

Tommy McClain

 

It would be your modem. Just buy one for $80, usually pays for itself within a year compared to cable modem rental fees.

 

Agreed. In my location which happens to be a midsized city with almost half the "city" population in rural areas the slowest available broadband service that you can subscribe to is 1.5 Mbps.

I'm pretty lucky myself. I'm paying for Comcast's 20/5 service but I average between 21-23 Mbps depending on the time of day, never been slower than 21 Mbps.

It wouldn't surprise me if you got faster speeds than advertised if you got a Docsis 3.0 modem (or possibly even a Docsis 2.0) as I've read that many cable providers overprovision a bit. There's a reason for it, but I can't remember offhand what it was.

I used to be on ADSL at 7 Mbps, but for the past year it has been mysteriously capped at 4.5 Mbps (I used to average slightly more than 7 Mbps for the first 6 years of service). If that hadn't happened I'd likely have stuck with the ADSL as 7 Mbps is enough for me.

Regards,
SB

 

Not bad for saying I'm supposed to get 120 download and 10 upload.

 

With the tv off:


and TV on:


Weirdly enough my ping improves while I'm watching tv.
It is a good today, yesterday I was ~0.9mb/s and the ping was north of 90ms though for some reasons the test was hitting for a server in Bilbao (SP) now it aims "Toulouse" (FR).

 

And that's obviously representative of the whole of the UK...



Over wifi.

Also, Liverpool, lol, BT probably don't want their expensive fibre cables to get nicked!

 

He never said it was only that SpeedTest isn't accurate (which it isn't as it's self-selective). TBH all these Speedtest results are meaningless to the topic as the sample is too small and not representative (specialist tech site more likely to have more expensive, faster internet than average). There exist enough reports with decent sample sets to paint an accurate picture.

 

lol, .

Liverpool actually has excellent broadband coverage in general, and there are tons of options.

http://www.cable.co.uk/local/broadband/merseyside/liverpool/


Here's a nifty, detailed OFCOM map showing broadband information across the UK: http://maps.ofcom.org.uk/broadband/

 

Yeah I know, that's what annoys me. If the dude is too cheap to pay for Infinity or a LLU version of it, don't blame the infrastructure, the UK is actually moving in the right direction on broadband the competition between BT, Sky and Virgin has basically allowed 70-80% of people in the country to get at least ~30Mb down which is insane. It's just up to people to decide whether they think it's worth the extra money or not.

What's sad is that there is no competition for the government superfast scheme, BT were basically the only company left in the bidding process because Fujitsu said it would basically be a money loser for them (and it will be for BT as well, at least in the short term) despite the heavy subsidies involved. Broadband is a numbers game, and there are locations where penetration is so low that spending over £500k on laying fibre to every cabinet from the exchange will never be worth it, even if the government are talking up a subsidy. Sure there will be a few heavy users, but there are exchanges in parts of middle England and the Scottish Highlands where bb penetration is below 20%, most people there have absolutely no use for 10Mb bb let alone 40/80/160Mb bb. I can see where Fujitsu were coming from personally.

I have no idea why BT are bothering personally, but I suppose they have that universal service mandate. If I were in charge at BT I would tell the government to do one and let them pay for it themselves and then either sell it to me or lease it out for wholesale users and pay Openreach a commission for dealing with it. Although that's for a different discussion...

On a side note, I had a letter from BT saying that my exchange is being converted to FTTH soon and the area will get 160Mb and upwards when they do it.

 

My exchange is due to get a FTTC upgrade this summer, but I have to question the value. I'd have to pay on the order of twice as much as I do now for my conventional BB, and my current 12 Gbps is plenty enough for all but huge downloads which I rarely need. One of the issues in selling people superfast BB is whether they actually benefit or not. What we really need is for faster BB to be no more pricey than conventional BB to encourage adoption.

 

Do you realise that Infinity, Virgin et al are simply not available in some areas?

Yeah sure all those backward people in Scottish highlands and middle England have different needs and uses from you fancy pants city life. There are millions of us, do you think we all still live in fucking caves? I didn't even need to look at your speedtest to know you must be a Londoner with that attitude.

It's great to know that those who have get even more and push up the "national average" while some of us are still stuck on shitty 3 Mb/s paying the same as you.

Here's an eye-opener - one quarter of Brits getting less than 3 MB/s according to this.