Broadband Speed Test

In article , dennis@home scribeth thus

Well I know a few well genned up techs who work with these systems and they beg to differ re speeds on a cabled network over such short distances...

And I know a lot of people using it and they all have the same speeds i.e. what they pay for unlike ADSL over copper.

But they do deliver over ADSL where their network doesn't cover.

So where do you get your results from then?.....

You get what you pay for with ADSL. Just because some people don't listen to the estimate of the speed they will get doesn't mean they are getting less than they are paying for. You look at the options and choose what does what you want.

Virgin cable is OK but its too expensive and it has some serious caps on it.

Oddly enough the speed test site in the post I replied to.

Something that niggles me is that I lose the connection at least 3 or 4 times a week. It's just a case of reconnecting to the router to get back on line but I do wonder am I just losing the wireless link between my laptop and the router or is it the internet connection I keep losing for 30 seconds? Very occassionally I have to do a complete power down and restart to get connected.

My nephew says I should get a VM engineer to come out and fix the line everytime it happens but I guess they would only come out if the internet became unuseable.

Do you have a separate router and modem? We do so can detect and check what has happened. But we do not see many disconnections of either sort - certainly not several times a week. And that is despite a load of other wireless users within quite a short distance. So maybe at least talk to VM and get them to look from their end?

Yes a Cisco router and a seperate modem supplied by VM when we took their cable broadband service. They have a sticker on the modem which reads "if connection is lost turn off pc and modem at the mains, wait 30 secs, turn on modem, wait 30 secs, turn on pc. This fixes the problem most of the time". As I said before I've only had to be that drastic on very few occassions. Think I will get on to them next time I get a problem.

Does it make a difference if you have many devices connected to the router?

Same sticker. Same pillock advice. I don't think we have ever had to reboot a PC - or a Mac - or an Android - or TV - to get things working. In fact, I am struggling to remember ever actually having to reboot the router. But the modem, yes, maybe every few months. Really rarely twice in a day or so.

And we have sometimes seven or maybe more devices connecting to the router.

In article , Thumper scribeth thus

Can you not cable connect it to the router for a while and see?.

Also how much 2.4 G radio use is there where U live?..

Our VM modem rebooted Three times in past year.

Once for IP addy change.

Once for speed upgrade, and once for Paddy and his fecking digger;!...

I suppose your right .. well in the paralled Deniverse ..

Well thats gotta be spot on accurate then ...

sadly a mile of copper and a thunderstorm always seems to knocvk mine into lala land.

But at least a reboot fixes it, unlike Netgears, which always seem to end up dead.

iPlayer isn't exactly a big bandwidth user. Even with three HD streams they would still be below the cap Virgin impose when you try and use all the bandwidth you can get during peak times. If you come home from work at 6 pm and decide you need to download a couple of DVD ISOs you will soon find out what their cap is.

Well yes that is exactly what it is. And its obviously the point I made that there is something wrong with the sub if they are only getting 1Mb/s from Virgin cable. However you appear to think I said there was something wrong with Virgin cable and have gone all defensive.

However if you want me to list what's wrong with Virgin cable I can.

In article , dennis@home scribeth thus

Not a problem here ..

Done just that and it looks fine whizzing away the way it does.

If it wasn't good enough then I'd soon be on the phone to cancellations but it is fine thanks. I just feel a bit guilty all this speed I need is here and just outside of town there are those who'd kill for 4 meg even as long as it stayed going..

Course they pay for 8 but get the 1 odd..

Which isn't right in the real world .....

So what do you think is wrong then?..

Nope just telling it like it is..

There are several obvious possibilities. Maybe they are still using one of the STBs to get their broadband. They were well known for only giving about 1M whichever service you paid for.

The Older cable modems couldn't deliver much bandwidth either. I don't know if they have actually gone around replacing them but they hadn't when I left a few years ago.

Then there are allsorts of possible problems with wireless.

But the most obvious is that they did the test after being throttled due to using too much bandwidth. IIRC 1M is one of the caps they impose on people they deem to be using their connection too much.

Contention. Customer service. Erratic upgrades. Sometimes run out of IP addresses on a node Poor connectivity with the rest of the net. Poor news server. Abuse dept liable to cut you off if anyone complains about you, without warning. Caps and traffic shaping. Cost. You have to manually change modem settings to get the best from your connection as Virgin seldom put you on the best channels for your area and the channels change all the time.

That happens to me (loss of wireless connection), but only with the laptop (2 differemt ones in fact). Kids desktop with USB wireless dongle is fine, but I have to reboot the modem/router to sort out the lost connection.

Does it coincode with microwave oven use?

MBQ

In article , dennis@home scribeth thus

These must be very old ones then?. Surprised there're still in service..

What left the cable company when you worked there?..

Congestion..

Not a problem here and this connection gets hammered!..

No better or worse then the telecoms average but OTOH nowhere near as good as someone like Zen Internet...

Well they have done what they said they would here around a month late but it was very usable before it was upgraded..

Well we're all running out of IP4 hence the move to IP6 ..

Not seen that..

Who has got one?..

Eh?..

Not here that I've noticed..

So 20 odd sheets a month for a line and 20 meg service thats delivered at the said 20 not up to 20 ?, doesn't seem that bad to me..

What are you on about?. Theres nothing I can adjust in the current modem or the one we had before that!..

Explain yourself please!..

There are lots of things that can be adjusted, if you know how.

In article , dennis@home scribeth thus

Course not Den, as theres no argument with any of them is there?..

How then, do tell?..

And what factors would you be adjusting then?..

I thought that had already happened for the few stations involved, none of which are affecting my ADSL.

Brian mentioned they were still transmitting a loop of "retune to FM" messages.

I get zero bits for the bin at 276KHz, thanks to talk sport, and only 2 bits for the bin at 375kHZ, which is surprising as Leicester is a fair way from Scotland.

No dips for either of the R5L frequencies, which is surprising, might be a different story at night.

My best bin is at 47kHz with 9 bits, with mainly 7 or 8 bits per bin up to 439kHz, then it tails-off smoothly to 2 bits at 685kHz, no bins used beyond there.