Brits rebel against low-speed networks

[ahhaa]

I do wonder what are the real speeds delivered here in the US:


Britain 'failing' net speed tests

There is a huge gap between advertised broadband speeds and the actual speeds users can achieve, research has shown.

A survey by consumer group Which? found that broadband packages promising speeds of up to 8Mbps (megabits per second) actually achieved far less. Tests of 300 customers' net connections revealed that the average download speed they were getting was 2.7Mbps.

Which? has called on regulator Ofcom and Trading Standards to launch a fresh investigation into UK broadband. The speed tests were prompted by complaints from members of the public, unhappy with the speeds of their broadband connections.

more at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6924866.stm

[TBoneit]

Well at Work on Cable I typically run 10Mb throughput with occasional drops to 7Mb. At home on DSL I was getting a solid 3Mb. On Cable at home it runs 15 to 22 Mb.

These speed tests are done by downloading CD sized files. A good test is to download a CD linux ISO file and see what speed is reported.

The service pack and driver downloads really fly. We do a lot of that as a computer repair store.

[rallynavvie]

One of the reasons I've always used DSL is because I had pretty reliable throughput as compared to cable internet. That and DSLs upload speeds are much faster than most every cable internet service at a comparable price point. My DSL is 5/3Mb (down/up) solid and the cable I had was anywhere between 2Mb and 8Mb on a 10Mb service.

Does digital cable service slow down cable internet speeds due to more data throughput?

[TBoneit]

Yup My DSL was steady and the Cable Modem varies. My understanding is that throughput on cable depends on how many users are on the cable loop and what they are doing.

[edDV]

Last mile issues dominate actual speed at an address. For DSL you have a dedicated set of lines to the CO so their are no local load sharing issues until you get to the CO. Cable internet shares bandwidth (~36Mb/s per 6MHz cable channel used) for a set number of households. Peak user activity causes statistical slowdown for all.

My experience is transmission speed is most often limited at the sending server. Servers like Microsoft Update are fast at night where many media servers are constantly bitrate rationed.

If you want to test your local connection speed, try speed tests at
http://www.dslreports.com/tools
or similar sites.

For cable connections you might want to compare late night to 8PM speeds.