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Re: [LUG] Fwd: UK 'misled' on broadband speeds

 

 On 27/07/2010 15:16, Grant Sewell wrote:
On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:07:51 +0100
Rob Beard wrote:

On 27/07/10 14:09, Julian Hall wrote:
On 27/07/2010 13:14, James Andrews wrote:
<snip>
So the Internet has no "speed" that anyone can measure in bps
No, but the point is - whatever your method of measuring speed -
that if your initial connection is slow you cannot tx/rx data fast
regardless of any external conditions. A mythical condition could
exist where every external connection is 1000Gb[1], but it your
connection is 1Gb (1000 times slower) that's all you're going to
get, and that is where the UK system is failing consumers. More
like BroadBLAND Britain than Broadband.

Julian

[1] Or however you choose to measure it

Or on the other hand, your connection could be reasonably quick and
the other end could be slow, or have a bottleneck.

For instance I'm on Virgin 20Mbit broadband, I regularly get the full
20Mbit/sec from some hosts, but other hosts I can be limited to
something like 300Kbit/sec.  I only tend to find this with smaller
sites, possibly hosted on the other side of the globe.  The big sites
such as Microsoft (yes I know!) I get the full 20Mbit.

So it's not all down to the connection at the premises, it's also the
connections to servers wherever they may be.

Rob
I think the point, though, is that it doesn't matter what the
connection speed of the other side is - if your connection is pitifully
inadequate you'll never have a chance of attaining even their speeds.

If I took the attitude of "it doesn't matter what connection speed I
have as the other end, or any intermediate point, might not be up to
the job" then I'd still have 56k dialup.

Grant.

Yes that in a nutshell is my point, although I will concede that wherever the slow part of the network is will affect both ends. BTW I'm on a 20b Virgin cable too and experience the same problems as Rob. The difference is though that if I or Rob connect to someone with a decent amount of bandwidth we will get the top speed, whereas someone with an 'up to 8Mb' ADSL package actually getting 2Mb never will.

Julian

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