OT Computer WiFi Question

[Tim Watts]

That sounds like poor DNS performance.

Try changing to 8.8.8.8 (google) and/or installing a local cache.

The other thing it could be is poor latency - but a ping test will reveal that.

[Tim Watts]

Do those need some weird windows software running somewhere?

I looked at Ubiquity and I could not make out if they'd be a PITA or not in a linux environment.

I went for Linksys semi-pro types which have been pretty solid (802.11(a,b,g,n,ac) and supports loads of ESSIDS and VLANS.

[tony sayer]

This is VM there're doing that around the Papworth Everad area just south of Huntingdon if my memory serves me well.....

I think its something to do with the kit thats in the boxes or the cost of it, might be wrong tho...

[tony sayer]

You just need a win PC to set them up on don't think they do Linux..

Well its only for setting them up, they'll run fine once you've done that..

[Johnny B Good]

I was tempted to try that the last time VM promised all of us 10Mbps users a 'free upgrade' to a 20Mbps service RSN when their A4 junk mailshot, addressed to "The Occupier"[1] revealed they were not only trying to attract new customers with a really cheap first six months cut rate offer (a fair enough tactic on its own) but also providing them not with a 20Mbps service (as promised to existing customers sometime in the next 12 or 18 months) but, in fact, a 30Mbps service!!!

Since my complaint wasn't really within the remit of the retentions dept (I wasn't having a problem over paying the not unreasonable 22 quid a month charges at the time which would be the normal reason to land up being referred), I took it up with customer support to explain that I wasn't at all happy that existing loyal customers were effectively being penalised by being made to wait for a 'free upgrade' to a 20Mbps service whilst they were providing new customers, not only the benefit of a special introductory 6 month rate but an immediate speed upgrade that was

50% faster again.

In the end, once it was clear that the best they could do was to provide me with a 60Mbps service (3Mbps upload) for a mere 5 quid a month extra, I took them up on that offer with the intention of 'downgrading' a few months later to what I hoped would be at least the 20Mbps service, if not the 30Mbps one. As it turned out, those few months turned into 11 months before I downgraded to the current '30Mbps' I'm now on.

In the meantime, the 22 quid a month was raised to 26 quid and a few pennies shortly after that and then increased again (all as a result of inflationary adjustments) to the 27 quid and some pennies a month that I now find myself paying. The way things are going, I may well get myself referred to the 'retentions department' in a year or two's time to save spending money on what is *now* quite clearly an overkill solution in regard of internet connectivity.

Yes, it's quite nice to be able to download the latest 1.5GB Linux Mint iso image file in less than ten minutes from the university of Kent's servers at 2 in the morning (the only time of the day when their server seems prepared to match the almost 4MB/s bandwidth of my local connection to VM's internet gateway) but this is a luxury I could well manage without.

As best as I can surmise, a retentions connection now runs at 10Mbps meaning such downloads will take a little bit longer, just under half an hour in similar circumstances with a less proportionate loss of speed during busier periods compared to the 50Mbps and faster services (I'll not feel the pain of the internet's bottlenecking during the busy periods quite so much - at least as far as simple one to one downloading sessions are concerned, Torrented downloads, otoh *will* suffer from the lack of a high speed connection but that's not such a big deal when the torrenting happens to be offloaded onto a 24/7 NAS box).

That's ever so true. What often surprised me when dealing with my local customers was the number of times I found myself having to recommend switching from ISPs such as Sky, BT and Talktalk, relying on "Poor Man's BroadBand"[2] to VM's cable network service available right outside of their own front gate.

When you live in an area already cabled for TV and internet services, it's a no-brainer to eschew the many tempting offers by VM's competitiors when you have such an opportunity to utilise such a trouble free and consistently high speed internet connection. The only edge these purveyors of "Poor Man's Broadband" have is on their service rental charges being considerably lower to mitigate the costs in reliability and performance their customers have to pay (costs go beyond mere monetary savings).

I haven't seen what service rental rates are for someone on a "Retentions Account" with VM. I suspect these rates aren't freely published since they're only available to existing customers threatening to leave VM's clutches, typically due to financial difficulties in meeting the normal service rental charges. More to the point, they probably depend on what competing ISPs have to offer by way of cut price deals on their "Poor Man's Broadband" service in any given area.

I'm surmising that any VM customers who do get themselves referred to "The Retentions Department" will find themselves haggling over the price and maybe even having to sign a NDA over the whole deal.

My advice (to self as much as anyone else) is if, as an existing VM customer, you feel they are 'taking the piss' re the monthly charges, make sure that you're armed with full knowledge of exactly what each and every viable alternative ISP in your area has to offer by way of economy packages. That way, when you do finally confront the "Retentions Department", you can demonstrate both a genuine intent to leave and knowledge of benchmark price points giving you some leverage in haggling the monthly retention package rate down to the lowest possible.

Virgin Media are obviously well aware of the truth of the adage, "It's easier to hang onto a customer than it is to find a new one.", despite their cynical abuse of their existing customer base as per the practice used so blatantly by insurance companies, otherwise they wouldn't have gone to the trouble of setting up a whole department dedicated just to the business of hanging onto their existing customers. VM are simply trying to "Have their cake *and* eat it."

When the attraction of "silly high speed" internet connectivity starts to pall, especially when you have no need of the dubious benefits of the TV and phone 'Value-add' packages, I'm sure a session with the 'retentions department' can prove a very fruitful cost cutting exercise if you put you mind to it. Just how fruitful, I couldn't say (and, I suspect, neither can any who have already availed themselves of this service).

I'm not sure what to make of that reply[3] but the point I was making was that whilst the download speedometer quickly reveals your final speed to within a percent or two, that doesn't seem to be the case with the upload speed test where the speedo quickly climbs to about half to two thirds in the first two or three seconds leaving you to watch its antics over the next 20 seconds or so as it struggles to approach the advertised upload speed limit of your connection.

[1] We first acquired a broadband connection nearly 15 years ago when my daughter signed up to NTL's digital TV and 512Kbps broadband services (using, unbeknownst to me at the time, the fiction that her bedroom was "Flat 3" at our home address), primarily for the broadband cable connection - standalone cabled internet connections weren't yet available at that time.

I offered to subsidise part of the monthly rental as an inducement to persuade her then boyfriend (now my son in law) to configure a spare PC running Debian Linux to act as a gateway router to the pre-existing

10Mbps cheapernet house LAN I'd installed a few years earlier. Thus it was that I got hooked onto a "Real, 'always on' Internet Connection' and the joys of a properly firewalled internet connection available to all the PCs hanging off of the LAN.

When my daughter left home a few years later, I took over the NTL account and immediately downgraded to a 128Kbps service to minimise the costs. Even a mere 128Kbps connection was better than a dial up connection providing at best one third of that speed whilst tying up a phone line with the loss of a simple firewalled internet sharing facilty.

About a year after that, NTL started advertising a cheap introductory offer for an internet only cable package (15 quid a month for their

128Kbps service, long since 'upgraded for free' to the current 30Mbps service of today) so I arranged to have my TV and internet package 'downgraded' to this new internet only service.

Unfortunately, when NTL's engineers turned up to complete the conversion, I was in hospital. When I finally returned home, just a week or so before Christmas, I discovered that they'd simply recovered the Pace STB, neglecting to replace it with the all important cable modem, leaving us without an internet connection, despite their obvious c*ck up, until mid to late January the following year. If I had been there to watch what they were doing, I'd have not let them recover the STB until they returned with a modem. Unfortunately I wasn't and the missus, bless her heart would not have realised NTL's c*ck up until way too late.

That was the one and only serious c*ck up I've ever had to contend with so far in my dealings with NTL/VM over the past 12 years or so. The issue was finally resolved with a generous refund covering the lost 5 or 6 weeks of service plus a discount over the next 6 months rental period to compensate for the inconvenience caused. Not too bad a result but it's a great pity that they weren't able to see fit, in view of it being a c*ck up on their part in the first place, to squeeze another engineering visit during what was obviously a very busy schedule of new customer connections.

Anyhow, all that aside, I started receiving junk mailshots addressed to 'the occupier' of various flats to the extent that I spoke to customer services to advise them that no such addresses existed and that I was already a customer so no more such junk mail please! I don't think the message got through to their marketing department since I still get VM junk mailshots every two or three months or so.

Ever since I was alerted to the outrageously preferential treatment to new customers, at the expense of existing customers, I'm not so bothered since it keeps me advised of VM's latest marketing tricks where existing customers are last in the queue for any promised upgrades that are given immediately to the "Johnny come lately" newest customers.

The problem stems from the fact that they know they can afford to take a cavalier attitude to their existing customers since the competing ISPs have so much less to offer (and the Retentions Department provides a backstop insurance against customers deciding to 'vote with their feet').

[2] "Poor Man's Broadband" is an expression I started using when I was still signed up with zetnet, a small but excellent ISP which was to eventually be consumed by an asset stripping company, Breathe Networks Limited (BNL), back in 2008. A wikipedia article here

Offers a brief synopsis of zetnet's history.

When I first signed up with zetnet, I was using their Lo-call dial in service (a penny a minute off-peak call rate number) but once I had access via the NTL BB connection, I was able to make use of a recently enhanced connection feature of zetnet's proprietry ZIMACS email client/ news reader user interface which allowed me to connect via any other ISP's Point of Presence dial in number, including broadband connections.

Thereafter I never had to dial up a zetnet connection ever again. I considered zetnet to be my value added ISP (it had a USP of which BNL seemingly remained totally oblivious to) with NTL merely providing a broadband connection to the internet, albeit only a mere 128Kbps service at that time. Also, around that time, zetnet were reselling BT's ADSL connections to their customers, who like me, could, if the occasion demanded, still fall back on the dial up connection which was just as well for those using ADSL since they, unlike myself, were often obliged to make use of it on account of the never ending problems, countrywide, with ADSL.

As a cable broadband connected customer, I soon realised that "I'd never had it so good." to borrow a phrase from elsewhere, and dubbed the troublesome ADSL offerings as "Poor Mans' Broadband" in recognition of that fact. It's a description that still rings true today.

[3] The only thing that comes to mind being that it's because you're using an SDSL service of some kind (otherwise, pass!).

[Chris French]

dunno, I can't say that web browsing really seems any better on our about 65 MB FTTC connection than it did on the old about 12 Mb ADSL+ connection. I always assumed it's because much depends on the remote webserver, a most pages you are likely to be browsing nowadays have got pull stuff out of a database etc. Added on top, lots of users wil be doing it over a local wifi connection which seems to add it's own sluggishness at times.

But yes does make a difference to youtube/netflix/iplayer etc. esp as often multiple streams nowadays, and the extra upload speed is very useful here.

[News]

In message , Davey writes

Oh yes. Wifey and child love the high speed service, but they both have more modern machines than my little Tosh, and are both gamers. I just browse the web and read Usenet :-)

[Chris J Dixon]

Johnny B Good wrote a great deal, including:

Agreed, I've been with them for ages now, and last year managed a speed and router upgrade for less money, eased by my having been on a 20 MB tariff they were trying to phase out.

It is sad but true, that you have to keep doing this from time to time to keep costs down. Just saved nearly £20 on my AA subs.

Chris

[Davey]

I don't think she's really worried, and I have no idea if she would know what your suggestion would mean. I am not getting involved with adjusting somebody else's system!

[tony sayer]

And we're not using SDSL either just plain ole VM ...

Seems much the same either way round most all of the time. However one Fibre we have at Ely in Cambridgeshire is very good most all the time,

70 odd meg, but the upload can be really slow sometimes around 18 on a good day but I believe its because its not a main exchange but a branch one with limited backhaul capacity..

...

[Johnny B Good]

Hmm, so just me then that's seeing this 'tantalising' behaviour with speedtest's upload speedometer. :-(

Presumably, purely in the interests of reducing the burden on news servers worldwide. Sensible action imo. :-)

[Dave Liquorice]

I doubt it, more likely to be:

1) A slow/overloaded remote server, try well connected sites like BBC News.

2) Website that makes your PC excute 200 k bytes of javascript to just say "hello world" in plain text using browser defaults. I run with javascript turned off, generally speaking sites load/render far faster without javascript and are easier to navigate. Anybody who writes a site that requires javascript for ordinary links to work shouldn't be writting websites.

3) Website that is pulling tracking apps, adverts, plugins etc from all over the web, see 1) & 2).

[Dave Liquorice]

grandchildren

If the ISP speed limits after the cap is reached it might be more instructive to let that happen, particulary if the Grandchildren are yet to have a decent grasp of of the concept of "money".

It would not be unreasonable to ask son/daughter to pay for the cap to be lifted so their kids can continue to enjoy the internet at Grandads.

No.1 Daughter knows full well that she is expected to pay for the extra download I have to buy to now she is back home to stop us hitting the (100 GB) cap. She needs to get an income first though... B-(

[The Natural Philosopher]

4) some virus checker screwing every packet..

[Dave Liquorice]

wavelengths

Agreed. The RF guys providing broadcast radio cameras or wireless monitors seem to just dump the aerial anywhere vaugely close to the place that needs coverage. If they go to the trouble of getting the aerial up a bit and clear of obstructions the things work extremely well and most definately not limited to line of sight.

What netwrking kit utilises OFDM modulation? I don't think all the

802.11 variations do? Have a friend down in the village who may want to link two places about 500 m apart with no line of sight but might have building's/fell side to bounce a signal off...

[tony sayer]

Well it does go up and down a bit at times but its generally much the same the "receive" side is usually a flat topped line!...

Indeed;->

[tony sayer]

Well I wouldn't expect them to do otherwise from what I've seen of them thats well, what they do;!.

I doubt anyone tells them that when training them to do their jobs in the first place....

Quite a bit and its in your DAB receiver and DTV too...

basics-tutorial.php

I'd try a pair of these they are quite good at that sort of thing the MIMO copes with that type of environment rather better than most and you don't really want too much aerial directivity, as you'll be relying on a lot of bounced paths or multipath and that using OFDM Mod will cope as well as anything in that environment.

However one of their situations where until he tries it he won't know how it'll go;)..

[Dave Liquorice]

extremely

What do but it still works so why bother erecting stands running feeders etc if it'll work just as well sticking up in the corner of the bag?

Most of these guys are pretty clued up and do know their stuff but "think of the derig".

The path is about 500 m. One point has a clear view down to the area of the other end point that is obscured by big trees but can proabably see the buildings about 50 m away. I was thinking that fairly wide angle aerial down there to "illuminate" the trees/buildings/fellside and a relatively directional one up at the clear site to look at this illuminated area and provide some gain.

16 dBi twin aerials, MIMO, as you say might work "out fo the box" as with all RF you won't really know until you try it.

[eastender]

If you use an ethernet cable to say your desktop you'll be able to get the speed regardless. We're on Virgin 100mbps and during the day at least we get almost that - say 96mbps - on various desktops and notebooks plugged into our ethernet nertwork. Obviously we have to use wifi for iPads and phones and for notebooks moved around.

E.

[Johnny B Good]

The download plot is pretty well flat topped from start to finish rather akin to a super car accelerating from the hard shoulder onto a quiet motorway with the cruise control preset to 79mph.

The upload speedo behaviour, otoh, (I don't see a speed plot) is more like that of a Trabant driver's attempt to beat his own personal best speed record along a 1 mile stretch of runway.

I've just repeated this morning's test and, just like before, I managed to edge the upload speed to 2.00Mbps on the second attempt (it didn't quite make it the first time round - just 1.97Mbps).

The D/L speed on this second attempt shows 32.49 Mbps (ping time 9ms btw) I forget what the first one was. When the D/L speed results consistently hit the 32/33Mbps mark, the novelty of it all gets old rather fast. I suppose it'll start to look more interesting when (assuming I haven't struck a deal with 'Retentions' before then) VM finally do get around to upgrading my line speed to 50Mbps as promised over a year ago now. :-(