My internet is rubbish, and I love it
Dec. 29th, 2011 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerMy parent's internet, on the back of a lane, in the middle of nowheresville, Devon, is 1.5Mbit when the wind is in the right direction. It was slightly painful to use at times when I was visiting, but mostly when my Dad's new Windows install was sucking down wodges of updates from Windows Update.
My internet at home is outmoded. You can't actually buy my current speed (20Mbit) on Virgin any more, and every so often they try to upsell me to the 30Mbit connection instead. But as I'm currently connected to work on a Citrix connection, downloading a game from Steam, just watched a couple of trailers, and Julie was catching up with Eastenders on iPlayer on her PC until a few minutes ago, without any hitches at all, I think I'll live for the moment.
I'm sure something will come along in a few months to tempt me to upgrade to the 50MB or 100MB offerings, but right now I can't think of a single good reason to.
My internet at home is outmoded. You can't actually buy my current speed (20Mbit) on Virgin any more, and every so often they try to upsell me to the 30Mbit connection instead. But as I'm currently connected to work on a Citrix connection, downloading a game from Steam, just watched a couple of trailers, and Julie was catching up with Eastenders on iPlayer on her PC until a few minutes ago, without any hitches at all, I think I'll live for the moment.
I'm sure something will come along in a few months to tempt me to upgrade to the 50MB or 100MB offerings, but right now I can't think of a single good reason to.
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no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 10:47 pm (UTC)It's plain old BT DSL and I'm happy with it for a number of reasons.
I'd consider cable DSL if BT really annoyed me.
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Date: 2011-12-29 09:05 pm (UTC)I'm now paying the same for 20MB, which is much better - I *could* pay for 100 but that would be an eye watering $150 a month... you guys don't know how lucky you are.
I'm still astounded that I'm now paying more for a slower connection than I had when we were in our flat in London 5 years ago.
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Date: 2011-12-29 09:09 pm (UTC)I still remember my first ISDN connection. Paid for by the minute and still worth every penny. Oh, the things I could download from the binaries newsgroups!
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Date: 2011-12-29 11:41 pm (UTC)I was on not-quite-16 meg from O2, which actually meant Be, who were great.
Then I transferred to Orange to get a newer phone, moved my broadband too, to save a fiver a month... And now I get a flakey 7 meg over the same line.
Not. Happy.
Wot?
Date: 2011-12-30 12:53 am (UTC)commiessocialists got better broadband than us? ;-)Re: Wot?
Date: 2011-12-30 04:30 pm (UTC)Re: Wot?
Date: 2011-12-30 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 02:17 am (UTC)We're in a tiny village in southeast Cornwall (although it's a Devon telephone number) without things like mains gas or street lighting, but when I've tested our download speed, it's been close to 7mb (we're paying for 8). Our exchange is due to be updated to ADSL2+ next month, so this should go up a bit.
Where exactly are your parents? And what ISP are they on? They may find significant speed improvements if they switch ISPs. www.uswitch.com/broadband/speedtest tells me that the average BT broadband speed in my area is 2.4mb. Talktalk is 3.1mb, but Zen gives us 6.8mb. That's a big difference, even if it is a little bit more expensive. Zen also usually wins customer service awards etc. Admittedly we need it for bunn's business, but even if we were using it purely for domestic use, I'd be willing to pay that much extra.
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Date: 2011-12-30 11:53 am (UTC)I didn't think that different providers could get radically different speeds from the same line, I thought that was entirely hardware bound. BT indicate from their checker that my parents have a very long cable length, and would thus be lucky to get more than 1MBit.
How far are you from your local exchange?
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Date: 2011-12-30 12:25 pm (UTC)It looks like your parents might be unlucky. I am amused though that your townie definition of "the middle of nowheresville" is actually "just off a major dual carriageway, about five minutes from the second biggest city in the southwest"...
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Date: 2011-12-30 01:19 pm (UTC)(And yes, definitely hyperbole. But they're a couple of miles further away from the exchange, which is part of the problem.)
It's hard to tell why your speed is better than your neighbours - is SpeedTest comparing you to other people on the same exchange? Or other people on the same postcode?
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Date: 2011-12-30 01:25 pm (UTC)I don't think there's much that you can do about being that far away from the exchange. Changing ISPs may well help in other situations though - at least it seems to be better for us.
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Date: 2011-12-30 01:46 pm (UTC)We have just upgraded to Virgin 30; if it were just us then the 10 would have lasted us forever I think, but the kids (especially M) tend to stream all day.
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Date: 2011-12-30 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 08:11 pm (UTC)Does the 100mb connection still have a bandwidth usage cap for peak times? It'd be hilarious if it did.
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Date: 2011-12-30 08:12 pm (UTC)They keep trying to upsell me to get TV as well.
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Date: 2011-12-30 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 08:28 pm (UTC)But yes, I could get TV over the internet.
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Date: 2011-12-30 08:31 pm (UTC)I bought some DVDs recently. And the Batman Blu-Ray box set. I shan't be watching number 4 though.
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Date: 2011-12-30 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 08:23 pm (UTC)And I'm totally with you - there's no compelling reason for 100MB at the moment for personal use, unless you share a flat full of ridiculous geeks that all need to download the whole internet at the same time.
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Date: 2011-12-30 08:24 pm (UTC)