ISPs Offer Faster Speeds, Why Don't We Get Them? 688
Ron Williams asks: "I'm infuriated every time I see that companies are raising their speeds when they can't maintain their current speeds. Here's my biggest issue: my grandmother signed up for the 3Mbps DSL plan through Verizon, however a speed test said she was only getting 750Kbps. Why pay for the extra bandwidth when she's not getting it? She downgraded to the 768K plan expecting to still have 750K. Wrong, instead her speed dropped to 300K. So, how about instead of companies constantly claiming to increase their speeds, they get their actual speeds correct. Comcast has done the same thing, I had their 6Mbps plan at one point, I got 2.5Mbps usually and sometimes 3Mbps, so they're all doing the same thing. In closing, with all these speed increases, why is my Internet not getting faster?" What practices and tools do you use to test your bandwidth speed and how have you approached your ISP when the performance repeatedly fell short of your expectations?
One thing to note is that you'll never get the top speed advertised for any connection due to transmission overhead; even so, you should be able to get close (within about 10-20%). Also, ISPs oversell their bandwidth, so if you run your speed tests when other customers are using their connection, you will notice the performance hit.
No surprise here move along (Score:3, Informative)
Yes they oversell their capacity. Some places it isn't too bad (my connection), sometimes it becomes as slow as dial-up. I'd vote with my dollars appropriately.
SLA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:SLA? (Score:5, Informative)
It's more like buying a Ferrari with a top speed of 196mph, and then finding that you can rarely go faster than 60 because other drivers are always in your way.
Re:SLA? (Score:5, Insightful)
She downgraded to the 768K plan expecting to still have 750K. Wrong, instead her speed dropped to 300K.
Using your example, the user has thus now bought a car that only does 60MPH and now magically the traffic has slowed to 30MPH
Re:SLA? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:SLA? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:SLA? (Score:5, Funny)
How about the Corolla Corollary?
*rimshot*
Re:SLA? (Score:5, Funny)
If we use 'Ford's Law', I would expect my computer to spontaneously flip over and catch on fire because of a faulty five cent connector.
Re:SLA? (Score:3, Funny)
Correct Ford Law (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, Ford sued to have this renamed the Bridgstone Law.
The correct Ford Law was coined in the 1980's and early 1990's: "You can have any color so long as it's beige."
Re:SLA? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:SLA? (Score:5, Interesting)
I might buy that for the overall issue of not recieving the bandwidth promised. However when you concider:
She downgraded to the 768K plan expecting to still have 750K. Wrong, instead her speed dropped to 300K.
Note that all the numbers are in bits per second since he referenced them that way earlier in his statement.
You can see that the problem is not a bottleneck issue. If your 3Mb/s connection generates 750Kb/s and the problem is a bottleneck, then dropping the maximum speed available to you is not going to change anything. Your throughput at the bottleneck will be just as fast - 750Kb/s.
This is more likely a QoS implimentation which assigns specific allotments of bandwidth to the various levels of service. "OK, we have 100Tb/s of bandwidth, our 3Mb/s customers pay the most so we will give them 50Tb/s, 2Mb/s gets 25Tb/s
You can see the difference between bottlenecking & segregated bandwidth issues. If there's a bottleneck, everyone up to the throughput of the bottleneck doesn't know it's there. Everyone over that limit sees it exactly the same. With the bandwidth segregation, each tier will show differently based on the load at the time.
Re:SLA? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:SLA? (Score:5, Informative)
Gas Mileage (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Gas Mileage (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:SLA? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:SLA? (Score:5, Funny)
You must be new here.
Re:SLA? (Score:5, Funny)
You must be new here.
Hell, you must be new to the human race :).
Re:Welcome to fascism, kid. (Score:5, Insightful)
In most parts of the world this is better known as 'corruption'.
Re:Bad Analogy (Score:3, Informative)
I am a night owl with a Time Warner cable connection. I have noticed that sometimes in the middle of the night you get WORSE speeds than at other times of the day. I assume part of the problem is that at that time of the night many systems on the internet are being maintained and/or backed up.
Also remember that when it is
Re:No surprise here move along (Score:5, Informative)
Easy to do if you're in a broadband-competitive area (I am, and I have Comcast, and if things aren't working to my satisfaction I call them up and say the magic word "Speakeasy".) I know people that only have one option for broadband, and things can get a mite more difficult (I'm not picking on Comcast alone, seems like most broadband providers are only as co-operative as they have to be in a particular service area.)
My ISP undersell...!? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm paying for a 3Mb/1Mb connection, yet according to the speedtest on speakeasy's site i'm actually getting 4022kbps/1044kbps.
If I use more distant speed test locations then it seems to be closer to what i'm paying for, however it looks like they must have raised the cap on the local end so that I can get transfers at the speed i'm paying for. On top of that, my connection bursts to 9/3 which makes small transfers really snappy
Oblig. Red Riding Hood reference... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:No surprise here move along (Score:4, Interesting)
Bye bye, Comcast.
Re:No surprise here move along (Score:3, Informative)
As it is, my $17
Re:No surprise here move along (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No surprise here move along (Score:5, Insightful)
My cable connection (Comcast) is the same, and specifically includes a disclaimer that no guarantee is made that I will actually receive the rated throughput.
In practice, it blazes in the off-hours, sludges out during prime time. And the most noticable effect when it's bad is latency, not throughput.
Re:No surprise here move along (Score:5, Insightful)
My cable connection (Comcast) is the same, and specifically includes a disclaimer that no guarantee is made that I will actually receive the rated throughput.
Doesn't matter. If they never give you the speed you pay for, it's fraud. Otherwise, why wouldn't they sell you 12M internet?
Re:No surprise here move along (Score:3, Insightful)
Because that would be fraud. However with the absolutely perfect set of circumstances with their current setup you would get what you thought you were paying for. Like every other time in life, the perfect circumstances never happen and they can pass that off as not their fault.
Is if fraud when hard drive companies sell you a "250GB" HDD? It's the same thing here, you pick the des
Re:No surprise here move along (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, no, actually. A 250MB hard drive is exactly that: 250,000,000,000 bytes. That's the same definition of 1GB (ie 1,000,000,000 bytes) that ALL hard drive manufacturers use, and have been for quite a while. Most will actually state x,000,000,000 bytes. So its fair, and you're are getting what you pay for. It's the same thing here, you pick the description that makes you look the best.
Only if that description is acturate; Otherwise its frau
SLAs mandated on $$ lines (Score:5, Informative)
That's because the FCC mandates SLAs on T/Frame/OC lines.
Think speed limit, not average speed (Score:3, Insightful)
In my case, I consistently get speed measurements **faster** than my plan provides, but I'm with a new and small ISP and I expect things to get worse as more people sign up.
False advertising != lack of SLA (Score:5, Informative)
Now, there are certain exceptions. In general, you can't drive a dense network at much beyond 1/3 the rated speed - thin-wire ethernet was bad for that - so you can expect similar sorts of problems on a shared line such as cable. The entire design of cable - a single line with taps off it - is exactly what thick-wire and thin-wire ethernet were like.
However, the article mentions DSL. DSL is not a shared line, it is essentially a dedicated line. The service only becomes shared at the teleco's CO (as that's where the DSL modems are, on the other side). At that point, everyone gets plugged into one or more routers. Now, when you change the speed of the modem, they simply program the DSL modem on their end to take a slower connection. They do not (at least, if they are network neutral) mess with the routers to change the priority of your network traffic.
Interestingly, when I worked for a company that got SDSL installed (no service agreement), the engineer ramped up the listed speed beyond what we'd paid for, but the actual speed we ended up with was what we'd bought . This doesn't conflict with what I've just said - we were on the edge of the service area and the speed we were supposed to get simply didn't operate. At all. Apparently, if the copper is poor, not all frequencies are guaranteed to work, and it's not an upper limit - lower speeds can be affected too.
Anyway, to the poster of the original story, I'd strongly suggest getting an INDEPENDENT person that you can trust to check the phone wiring from the DSL modem as far out as practical. At the very least, check the wiring in the house. It is possible that poor wiring, a rusty connector or a loose connection somewhere is killing the speed. If that is the case, then fixing the problem would be very cheap and easy, and would save a LOT of money - you'd have more bandwidth without shelling out the extra cash.
If the wiring is good, then the fault lies with the ISP, and I'd suggest calling a consumer advocacy group for advice on what to do - if, indeed, you can do anything. If only a handful of people care enough to actually do anything, you probably can't - although there are usually multiple DSL providers in an area, and some are better than others.
If a LOT of people are VERY frustrated AND willing to spend hard cash to get this fixed once and for all, you might want to investigate the pros and cons of setting up a DSL cooperative. The teleco can't deny you equal access to the CO (that's law), but industrial-strength network equipment (DSL modems, high-end routers, T3 or T4 line) - that isn't cheap. And, yes, you probably would need to go to a T3 or T4 in order to make the whole thing fast enough to pay for itself. This is NOT a recommended option, without some serious funding behind it. However, if the funding is there, it is the one path you can take that (a) guarantees you the results you want, (b) guarantees the ISP has consequences it WILL notice, and (c) guarantees you the undivided attention of every disenchanted geek and abusive ISP on the planet - at least, for a week or two.
Re:False advertising != lack of SLA (Score:5, Interesting)
Broadband data networks over CATV are very different than shared-media Ethernet. Ethernet uses baseband signalling, everyone shares a common channel (CSMA). With cable, there can be multiple independent downlink channels. There is a single uplink channel that uses TDM to support multiple users. Each cable modem is assigned a shared 6 MHz downlink channel and a time slot on the uplink channel. There is no contention for access to the media.
Re:No surprise here move along (Score:3, Interesting)
and in some cases it's really bad (something like 40:1 on a standard home dsl) so if you have a 2 meg adsl so if you only get connection speeds of 100kbs there isn't much the provider will do about it (yes I have seen this happen with a certain large provider over here who would not do anything because it was indeed in range)
So have a lo
Re:No surprise here move along (Score:3, Funny)
my dsl, my test... (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah I wonder about that, I'm supposed to have DSL (Verizon), always suspected it to be a bit slow: here are my test results: download: 783kbs, upload: 138kbs. I don't have my contract here, but that seems slow. I'm moving from this house, or I'd check further into it. (I just checked, I'm paying for the high speed connections, my test results are about 1/3 what "up to" speeds should be...)
My download speeds feel sluggish, the upload speeds are a little painful. My biggest objection to the upload speed results is they are just barely better than ISDN. WTF?
(BTW, go here [visualware.com] if you want to see what your speeds are... It's a test site to see if your connection speed supports VOIP. Mine BARELY could.)
Re:my dsl, my test... (Score:2)
Re:my dsl, my test... (Score:2)
I have a feeling that that's not the test that ISP's use to measure their systems. I tried it three times in a row and got fairly different results each time. The one thing that was consistent was that it told me that my connection has too much "jitter" to use VOIP. And yet, I replaced my POTS line with Vonage a year ago and haven't noticed any problem.
Re:my dsl, my test... (Score:5, Informative)
I have 3Mbit down/384k up service (and was getting 3Mbit down and 360k up on their test, and it still told me I couldn't use VoIP with good QoS, yet I use VoIP all the time on my network and get quality equal to or better than my cell phone. It's not clear to me that their test is all that useful - or their metrics are screwed up. If they consider 33 ms ping times bad, I'd like to know where they can find a better residential connection.
Really though, this whole story is a non-issue. I have yet to see an ad for any residential serviice that doesn't say "speed not guaranteed". The speeds they quote you are always "up to this number", not "you always get this number". For cable it's a shared medium between other users on your head end, so unless you're the only user, you're not going to be able to max out the line. 802.11b is supposed to be 11 Mbit per second, but I rarely get that, because it's divided among the other users of the access point. It doesn't mean Avaya and Enterasys are scamming consumers because their access points don't always give 11Mbit/sec. DSL is very sensitive to your distance from the CO and quality of the wiring, so of course it's not guaranteed. Even a LAN is not guaranteed. For short and medium transfers, I rarely get 100 Mbits out of my local network. These "connection testers" are mostly useless - a better test is to download large amounts of data (BitTorrent, for example) and look at the average throughput.
Re:my dsl, my test... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds like (Score:2)
Re:Sounds like (Score:2)
Unless you're being fecetious...
Not the case for me! (Score:3, Funny)
My download speed really is that fast if I am downloading from a good webserver. And even when I'm not, the bandwidth gets used in bittorrent
Sorry you are having problems....
Re:Not the case for me! (Score:2)
I'm also getting my full bandwidth (Score:5, Interesting)
Connection is:: 14320 Kbps about 14.32 Mbps (tested with 12160 kB)
Download Speed is:: 1748 kB/s
Tested From:: http://testmy.net/ [testmy.net] (Server 2)
Test Time:: 2006/06/01 - 11:34pm
Bottom Line:: 250X faster than 56K 1MB Download in 0.59 sec
Tested from a 12160 kB file and took 6.956 seconds to complete
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.8.0.3) Gecko/20060326 Firefox/1.5.0.3 (Debian-1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.3-1)
Diagnosis: Awesome! 20% + : 85.68 % faster than the average for host (xmission.com)
Validation Link:: http://testmy.net/stats/id-QIOGKAJMB [testmy.net]
Why? I'll tell you why. (Score:2)
Why?
Because nobody ever challenges them. And the company gets away with it.
Re:Why? I'll tell you why. (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't have that problem with my fiberoptic (Score:2, Informative)
No real point to that. Just braggin'
Re:Don't have that problem with my fiberoptic (Score:5, Funny)
Just curious...
Re:Don't have that problem with my fiberoptic (Score:2)
I'm fine with my 1.5Mbps down... but I'd love me some greater than whatever this up crap that I have is.
Re:Don't have that problem with my fiberoptic (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm in the northern VA suburbs of DC and I know that Verizon's already in a wide variety of towns in the area.
speakeasy for both (Score:2, Informative)
Use this to test your connection speed, and make speakeasy your ISP if you want to get the bandwidth that you pay for. It may cost you a bit more, but their technical support, speed, and service policies are more than worth it.
Re:speakeasy for both (Score:2)
Besides, they require Flash.
no guarantees (Score:2, Informative)
Variance (Score:2)
As distance increases DSL speeds drop. For Cable when usage is up, speed drops.
for me, I pay for 2.5 Mbit connection and I get around 2.1 Mbit. I'm not on top of the hub, but I'm pretty close.
if you're getting speeds that low, its likely because you live a great distance or away or you may be having other line problems.
Guess I'm lucky (Score:2, Interesting)
Municipal Broadband (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Municipal Broadband (Score:2)
It's a cooperative?
Re:Municipal Broadband (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it's municipal broadband as my subject line said. That means that the city runs it. We, the people, collectively own the assets of the city since we are the voters and the taxpayers and this is a democracy. Since they only provide service within the city, then everyone that is able to receive service owns the network. We "own" it in the same we that we own the parks and other public spaces.
If I don't like the way the network is run I can vote to change it. Now, you may argue that I can "vote with my dollar" if I am customer of MegaCorp Broadband. The problem with that logic is that not everyone has an equal vote. In a democracy, everyone gets one vote no matter how much money you have. We, the citizens, decided we were tired of getting screwed by MegaCorp Broaband (Adelphia or Verizon as the case may be here and now) and that we would have provide our own service. Now, I can get my Broadband, my electricity (yes, the electric company is run by the city here too), and my water from the city and I can feel confident that I, as a citizen, can have a say in how these services are run regardless of how much money I may have.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Municipal Broadband (Score:3, Interesting)
The answer is in the link that the original poster provided. But since this is
Are my taxes going into this project?
No.
ISPs Offer Faster Speeds, Why Don't We Get Them? (Score:2)
> any connection due to transmission overhead; even so, you should be able
> to get close (within about 10-20%).
When I had 256k service from CenturyTel I got exactly 256k throughput. Now that I have 1.5M I get from 900k to 1.2M. Since I'm about 15,000 feet from the CO on a fifty year old buried cable, I'm not too unhappy.
My favorite bandwidth test (Score:2, Informative)
Cox (Score:2, Informative)
I have never had a problem with their service.
Bit Versus Byte (Score:5, Insightful)
Myself, I have 512Kb/s down, and as a rule of thumb I divide by 10 to get it in bytes. I get at best 54KB/s downloads, which works out by this rule.
I know, a byte is 8 bits, but as a rule of thumb, dividing by 10 seems to include overhead.
I know my 512Kb/s ADSL connection doesn't rate against these 3Mb/s cable connections, but, this is my experience, learn from it what you will.
Re:Bit Versus Byte (Score:2)
Re:Bit Versus Byte (Score:3, Insightful)
Looking at the submitter's ratios, it doesn't look like they did the conversions wrong, though. 3 Mbps is around 400 kb/s max, not 750 kb/s max. So they actually do have a problem, but it's always good to remember these conversions when discussing ISPs.
Re:Bit Versus Byte (Score:3, Interesting)
Overhead in converting from bits to bytes? :)
Application-level measurement of bandwidth is of course actual data free of padding (since the padding is done by a lower networklayer, it's completely transparent).
iPerf kicks much ass (Score:2, Informative)
Download it here http://dast.nlanr.net/Projects/Iperf/ [nlanr.net] From the website: "Iperf is a tool to measure maximum TCP bandwidth, allowing the tuning of various parameters and UDP characteristics. Iperf reports bandwidth, delay jitter, datagram loss. "
my solution: I installed a DSL splitter (Score:5, Informative)
I just moved to a new house. This time, I decided to do things right, and had a DSL splitter [homephonewiring.com] installed at the point where the phone line enters the house. [My splitter looks just like the one in the picture.] The previous owner had had unacceptably low DSL speed, but with the splitter installed, I'm within about 8% of the theoretical maximum on the 3 Mb/s plan. The phone line between the NID mounted on the outside wall of my house and the phone exchange is likely not perfect, which may account for the 8% degradation.
Note that the rated maximum speed (3 Mb/s in my case) accounts for not just the actual payload data being transmitted, but all of the protocol overhead as well: TCP headers, IP headers, etc (there are multiple protocol layers, each with overhead). Your typical internet speed test is not able to directly account for all of the protocol overhead, so your data will be transmitted slower than the rated line speed.
Doug Moen
Re:my solution: I installed a DSL splitter (Score:4, Informative)
There's no reason to pay $57 for what your DSL provider gave you for free plus a fancy plastic enclosure. Just cut the RJ-11 jack off one of the filters they give you and wire up your own 'splitter' in a $2 junction box.
My strategy (Score:3, Interesting)
I suck up. (Score:5, Interesting)
It may not be as satisfying as being intelligent or righteously indignant on the phone, but it gets great results. I consistently get a tech out same day (from ATT (SBC), no less). I have problems where my circuit speed will drop drastically (from 3Mbps to 145Kbps) on a regular basis, and now that I have started being saccharine sweet, it is generally fixed almost immediately.
Simply point out that it is running incredibly slow (say something about images and pages taking FOREVER to load, don't sound techie) and that you logged in following THEIR instructions (thank you guys for giving me those previously, oh thank you thank you) and checked the speed and saw that it was slower than normal (from what you guys told me before), and that you would greatly appreciate it if they could fix it (since I am so helpless and LOVE you guys), and please help me, and oh lord thank you so much for giving me your time.
Other than that, make sure your router isn't causing you problems. Swap it out with a borrowed one or something. I had a bad one that was destroying my throughput. Check cables, wall sockets, everything. Make sure you can eliminate everything on your end before you call them.
However, if they ask you to test things again, gleefully (pretend) to do it. It makes them happy and gets you better service later. After all, it is not really that hard to sit there reading the newspaper and drinking coffee and simply saying "Nope, still doesn't work."
Excellent comment. (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately what you outline is the only effective tactic in dealing with someone that makes $10 per hour, is reading from a script, doesn't really care about their job and knows that they will not get in trouble no matter how nonsensical they are as long as they are reasonably following written procedures. Be nice, and you might land on the nice side of the procedures. Be angry or uncooperative... You'll be following the worst parts of procedures to the letter.
Re:I suck up. (Score:3, Funny)
"Sure Mr. Customer, we'll be right out to fix your wiretap... er... I mean DSL service... Thank you for calling AT&T!"
Sometimes that's wishful thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
So I call their tech support, am as nice as it gets (it's not that guy's fault anyway), follow the instructions so he can be sure that i
It doesn't work. (Score:3, Insightful)
The service has been rock solid. My ISP simply delivers, except when they don't. Thus, when I have no Internet, I raise hell. No, I won't plug in another computer, I just tested this network card, plugged in a crossover to my
Packet overhead? (Score:2)
Some things I've found. (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't recall that I've ever gotten anything less than that on DSL across the line. I've run routers handling the "megacentral", the ISP end of the DSL connection, and have had more than a bit of opportunity to test DSL connection performance.
As far as cable, we have Comcast in this area, and are paying for the higher service level. I do notice that when the school year starts, we tend to have performance issues for a month or two. This has happened on several occasions. So, instead of 6 to 8mbps (they recently upgraded to 8mbps, before that it was 6), we get more like 3 to 4. Annoying, but not a huge issue.
I have noticed that on the Comcast sales literature, they say "N mbps *" where the * links to something saying "No guarantees".
However, most of the time I'm able to get 8mbps, when the remote end can handle it. I have servers hosted at a location where I know I have plenty of bandwidth. I just downloaded the Ubuntu Dapper ISO over cable:
730740736 bytes transferred in 710 seconds (1005.4K/s)
So, that's right at 8mbps. This is not unusual.
It's important to realize that there are several places where there could be performance issues though. The line, the directly connected ISP bandwidth, the server you're downloading from, and everything in between.
Winging at your ISP for problems which are outside their control isn't going to be helping anyone. If you are downloading Dapper right now via FTP from the main site, the server is almost certainly not going to be able to handle 8mbps.
Another thing I'd wonder is whether maybe your grandmother might have a virus or two, or perhaps there's some file-sharing going on? All these lines have a fraction of the upstream bandwidth that they do down. If you are pushing out much data, it interferes with incoming data. If you do any performance testing, make SURE that you don't have anything else using it, either outgoing or incoming.
Hope this helps.
Sean
My beef (Score:2)
If I could just afford that full T1...
33K Up on $45 a month cable (Score:2)
Speed Tests Reliable? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm able to pretty much get full speed out of my connection, but most of the times when I do speed tests o
Your link is probably fine... (Score:3, Insightful)
connects to
Your 6MB Cable
connects to
Cable Company
connects to
A slow or oversold internet connection
Here is a basic "How to" for calling your ISP... it sucks, and its a tad humiliating for most alpha-geeks... but sometimes we have to play by their rules to get our pr0n and warze faster.
1. Connect one PC to your cable/dsl modem (nothing else...)
2. Reboot your PC and your modem
3. Retest your speeds using a major speed test site
4. Call your ISP and explain your issue
5. Listen and follow their instructions (even if its a painful script... do it)
6. Respond with kindness and friendly responses (remember, they hold the key to escalating your issue or closing it without resolution)
Hopefully your ISP will recognize their is an issue and resolve it. Otherwise - tell them to go pound sand and move on to the next.
too many ways to point the finger of blame (Score:3, Interesting)
And be careful when making claims "no ISP delivers the speed they promise". My ISP is Comcast on a cable modem. They claim they are giving me 6 mbps. And 99 percent of the time when I'm doing big video or Linux iso downloads or such like that and can see a good test of my actual speed, I'm getting the speed they say they're selling me...6 mbps.
Some of us do get the speed (Score:3, Informative)
But that's not what I'm concerned about. They finished installing the Project Lightspeed box just up the street a few months ago, and I'm close enough that if they really do use VDSL2+, I can get 50-100 Mbits bidirectional. But guess what? They're only offering 6M down / 1.5M up for the near future. The rest of it is reserved for their stupid cable-over-IP service, and I really don't want pay TV, no matter which company or technology it's coming from. I'm quite happy with free over-the-air ATSC, especially PBS.
However, I am aware that the DSL I get is technically a business class DSL (it's the same price as the equivalent business class service), so maybe in a few months when they start hooking it up, they might have a business class option that's a bit faster.
note the wording of the contract. (Score:3, Informative)
2. Why doesn't the internet get faster:
a. I can't download faster than you can upload. So the Asynchronous lack of speed means nothing moves faster than the slowest side.
b. The more people with high bandwidth connect to the net the slower the sites they go to becomes, including popular bandwidth testing sites!
c. Bandwidth capping, many sites cap their speed so as to not overwhelm the customers they had in 2000 (meaning the same companies who code only for IE 5.0)
d. Poor router configuration. Not by your ISP but by the "backbone" providers in between. I've actually worked at an ISP where customers dropped peering agreements because bandwidth was better if we didn't peer with them.(bad routers at our peering provider)
e. Poor site design. I spent a whole day trying to explain to a company why a 1mb webpage was slower than a 30k page from their competitor.
f. You get used to speed. Much like how you used to buy this really great sounding stereo, only to realize 6 months later that it sounds like crap.
g. Poor quality bandwidth testing. Just because you only get 750kbps between you and the testor doesn't mean that's all the bandwidth you have, it means that's all the bandwidth you can get. Switches, Nics, Routers etc all affect what happens.
my cable provider delivers (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a 10Mbps cable connection. Sure, most 'net servers aren't able to give out files that fast. But the ones that are..
3-4 weeks ago I downloaded a 142MB file. Firefox reported it as coming down at one megabyte/sec. I'm not sure whether it lied, but the file was downloaded in under 2 minutes.
Surprised the hell out of me. Made me happy.
Cable company is NTL. Their technical support is absolutely atrocious. Luckily their connection is very stable, so I rarely have to call them. And the download speed is very nice indeed.
Slightly OT: Overhead (Score:3, Informative)
Here in the UK, what companies sell as (eg) a 512Kbps connection is actually (from memory) a 572Kbps connection, with the extra few Kbps to account for that overhead. At least, that's how it was at least until recently; I can't tell any more as I upgraded to my ISP's 8Mbps service, but my phone line (as expected) can't handle that rate. (Still, the ~3.6Mbps I get is fine for now, and the upgrade was only £1/month more)
It always makes me laugh when I see companies advertising 16Mbps or even 24Mbps services; I can't believe that more than a handful of people actually have the line quality needed and are close enough to their exchange to achieve those speeds. Now if only BT would start improving the lines...
Yeah, it is DSL... (Score:4, Insightful)
Before complaining about your DSL line being slow, I think you really should read up on how DSL (and most likely ADSL to be specific) works. You are hardly ever going to get max bandwidth out of a service line though I honestly cannot complain about the speeds I am getting with Cable. So, remember, before starting a bitch-fest...know what the hell you are talking about...
Roadrunner Lite (Score:3, Informative)
Speedtests Piss Me Off (Score:3, Informative)
1) When you access a speed test, it is not very likely that the webserver running said speed test is directly on the other side of your link to your ISP. It far more likely that you accessed a test running on a web server on a different network than your ISP's. SO, you are not testing the speed of your line, you are testing the speed of the slowest/most congested link between you, and the speed test site. Or, to put it a better way, you are testing your connection speed to a speedtest. If a speedtest's feed to the internet is only a T1 line, got news for ya, it will never show anyone's speed as anything faster than 1.5 mbit, even if they have 3 mbit dsl.
2) Speedtest enthusiasts (and yes, some people click them like mad, it must be fun, I dunno), seem to believe that just because they have a 7 mbit download, that every web server on the planet is willing to send 7 mbit at you, just because you can potenially see it. Got news for you, that web server is busy servicing god knows what else, and if you get 1.5 mbit, consider yourself lucky. a 7mbit connection is not about having 7mbit to any _one_ site, because it is just not going to happen. It is about having 7mbit capacity TOTAL.
You want a decently (and not good mind you) acceptable speed test, go to freebsd.org, select four different ftp mirrors, and download four different isos at once. A better method is simple, "let the merits of the service speak for themselves." If you can do many things at once, without any noticable speed hit, you have a nice fast connection, with a lot of capacity, be happy. If you can slug it out with little to no effort, you're hitting your upper limit, whip out a calculator, and do some actual math, because a speedtest will not tell you your connection speed.
The question is ignorant, moronic, and doesn't belong here.
Ye Olde Competition (Score:3, Insightful)
When the users aren't clued-in enough to appreciate real differences between service/product A and service/product B, claimed differences become more important, from an economic point of view.
If provider A claims N Mbps, provider B better counter with similar speeds or lower prices. If the users, by and large, wouldn't actually know a Mbps if it hit them on the head, then the easiest and most profitable way to compete is claim to provide N+1 Mbps. After all, for most light web browsing / chat-room / e-mail users, 1Mbps and 10Mbps connections provide similar experiences. What the service really is capable of is less important than the way the users feel about it.
The same circumstances drove claimed CD-ROM drive speeds into meaningless exaggeration in the late 90s. The same circumstances drove Intel to chase gigahertz rather than real-world performance in the Pentium IV line. The same circumstances cause Wi-Fi equipment vendors to make wild claims of 100+ Mbps speeds, when users will be lucky to see a tenth of that.
The phenomenon applies to other fields as well. Digital cameras make a big deal about megapixels, because that's easy to measure and compare, even though image quality is about more than megapixels, even though other, non-image-quality issues may be of far more importance. Plenty of owners of status-symbol watches have no idea what "jewel" means in that context, but are confident that more is better. Few owners of cars with badges like "DOHC" or "VTEC" can give a coherent explanation of what those badges mean, but the badged cars sell for a premium anyway.
Re:Shocking! (Score:5, Funny)
Someone's gotta seed the Matlock and Bob Hope torrents.
Re:Shocking! (Score:3, Insightful)
Irrelevant. They sold her on 3 Mbps, they aren't delivering it. It's not my business or yours what she wants it for.
there's a joke somewhere in here (Score:4, Funny)
but i'm not telling that joke, nope
Re:Shocking! (Score:3, Informative)
The reason you can piggyback DSL on a telephone line without affecting voice calls is that DSL uses frequencies outside of the human voice range to transmit the data. The farther away you get from the central office,
Re:Shocking! (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you implying that DSL is not shared? The only part of DSL that is not shared is from your house to the CO. From there it is shared as the bandwidth in and out of your CO is shared by everyone that terminates in that CO, I guess the only person you would not share that CO bandwidth with is if you were connecting directly to one of your neighbors.
On a side note. I have Comcast. I can always got my advertised speed any time of the day or night. Not a
Re:Shocking! (Score:3, Interesting)
My suggestion to the poster is try a different ISP, they're