Bradband speeds

Am i thick or something, but no ISP's I have spoken with can guarantee
2mb downloads, they all say up to 2mb. This to me seems a bit of a con
considering their deals. If i'm paying for 2mb, i should get 2mb, no?
When i was in London, i was with Cable London and it was always
connected at 1mb, which is the deal i signed up for. Is ADSL different
from cable in the respect that they cannot guarantee the speeds?

Cheers John

"JoHNY" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) ups.com...
> Am i thick or something, but no ISP's I have spoken with can guarantee
> 2mb downloads, they all say up to 2mb. This to me seems a bit of a con
> considering their deals. If i'm paying for 2mb, i should get 2mb, no?
> When i was in London, i was with Cable London and it was always
> connected at 1mb, which is the deal i signed up for. Is ADSL different
> from cable in the respect that they cannot guarantee the speeds?
>
> Cheers John
>
Broadband speeds are determined by several factors. With cable, they use
fibre optics to relay data from the headend to the local UBR, then coax to
the premises. This usually achieves the advertised speeds.

ADSL on the other hand, has to rely on copper cable, which could be as much
as 60 years old (from the old GPO days). Also, some time ago, they used to
use other metals instead of copper to fix broken wires, resulting in signal
degradation. The signal attenuates quite dramatically the further away you
are from the exchange.

You can not simply compaire broadband offered by cable co, to that of ADSL
offerings. They use completely different technology.

It is worth remembering that download speed is only as fast as the slowest
link in the chain. You could have a super-duper big fat pipe cabable of
1gig, but if the data you are downloading from is only on a 56k dial-up,
then you will only achive a download speed of that dial-up link.

Cheers, i was wondering specifically about connection speeds. In terms
of LAN speeds, with dial up your connection it depends on how many
people in the local loop. For example, you could be connected at 39
even though you have a 56 card. Is it the same principle with ADSL?

John

On 5 Oct 2005 12:06, "ABC" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>ADSL on the other hand, has to rely on copper cable, which could be as much
>as 60 years old (from the old GPO days). Also, some time ago, they used to
>use other metals instead of copper to fix broken wires, resulting in signal
>degradation. The signal attenuates quite dramatically the further away you
>are from the exchange.

I think that's the major part as to why ISPs need to "cover their backs" on
whether one will get the highest speeds. People have posted about having a
neighbour with a higher speed, and it turns out the phone lines go to quite
different BT exchanges, or one takes a much longer router to the same exch.

Also, on the 'only as fast as the slowest link' aspect, BT Wholesale seems
to feel anything from 400 to 2000 kbps is acceptable for a 2000 kbps line,
so if someone sees lower than 2000 kbps on a regular basis, this might not
be enough to claim a significant problem... Worth using the samknows.com
*exchange checker* to see if the exchange needs additional capacity or if
it should be working fine for all services... Peter M.
--

UK ADSL <http://tinyurl.com/5jpa4> - Happy to save cash with Plus.Net!!

On 5 Oct 2005 04:32:19 -0700, "JoHNY" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> For example, you could be connected at 39
>even though you have a 56 card. Is it the same principle with ADSL?

not with BT currently, some of the LLU operators do that.

Phil
--
Tiscali - dialup speeds at Broadband prices, see
http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/postlist...&Board=tiscali

AOL - the unlimited ISP of choice for heavy downloaders.

On 5 Oct 2005 [sometime], "JoHNY" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>with dial up your connection it depends on how many people in the local loop.
>For example, you could be connected at 39 even though you have a 56 card.

nothing to do with how many people, but more likely (a) distance from exchange
and (b) any noises or losses on the line

>Is it the same principle with ADSL?

Well, there's probably some similarity, of both (a) and (b) and while there
may be capacity problems affecting the speed of traffic (see samknows.com and
some exchanges may show there to be "capacity upgrades" planned) but not going
to affect your line's speed concerning synchronisation with the exchange... As
some others have found, they may have a line speed of 2272 kbps but the data
is controlled by their ISP down from the (possible) 2000 kbps to just 1000,
or perhaps lower (mention has been made in the past of Tiscali setting up
connections at 2000 kbps even for users of their 250 kbps service).
--

UK ADSL <http://tinyurl.com/5jpa4> - Happy to save cash with Plus.Net!!

Hi John
I wondered about this also but the BTspeedcheck site looks on `upto
2meg` lines as being `normal` from 400 to 2000kbps?.
I have had speeds as low as 250kbps but lately average 1400 ish so not
too unhappy with that.
Cheers
Steve

"JoHNY" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) oups.com...
> Cheers, i was wondering specifically about connection speeds. In terms
> of LAN speeds, with dial up your connection it depends on how many
> people in the local loop. For example, you could be connected at 39
> even though you have a 56 card. Is it the same principle with ADSL?
>

In general with ADSL your ISP sets the link speed lower than your modem is
capable of. I forget what the max rate on ADSL-1 (as currently used by BT)
is, but for example until recently I had a 512K connection, now its 2Megs.
However in addition there is "contention". That is if you have 5 to 1
contention, the PIPE between the Exchange and the ISP will only have 2 Megs
of bandwidth for every 5 customers. So if there are 10 x 2Meg customers
there will be a 4 meg pipe to the ISP.

In addition we are the stage now where there may be contention at the other
end. If a server has a 100 meg card, and 100 users try and access it, they
are not going to get 2 Meg each...


> John
>

On Wed, 5 Oct 2005 21:20:39 +0100, "David Wade" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>In general with ADSL your ISP sets the link speed lower than your modem is
>capable of.

that's the exception rather than the rule. Only a handful of ISPs do
that, usually ones you want to avoid.

Phil
--
Tiscali - dialup speeds at Broadband prices, see
http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/postlist...&Board=tiscali

AOL - the unlimited ISP of choice for heavy downloaders.