Broadband Truth Campaign

[Largest of Als]

I noticed this on The Gadget Show on C5 today, thought it might be interesting, since there are regulary threads about broadband providers and speeds..

Think you're getting a great broadband deal? Think again. With many people falling short of the "up to" speeds offered by their ISP, we're campaigning for the truth: advertised speeds reflecting what we're actually getting.

Join us - test your speed here and let us know what you think below.

http://gadgetshow.five.tv/jsp/speed_test.htm

I like the fact that they give you all the numbers to call up and complain..

Could be handy for people to let the rest of the forum know what speeds they're supposed to be getting, and what they actually get..


Al

[0x21]

But the company isn't doing anything wrong... they are quoting 'up to' speeds, and the user gets 'up to' those speeds (ignoring any traffic issues, which are part of the technology and the reason broadband is so cheap). I fail to grasp the issue here?

[Largest of Als]

I'm not saying it's a big issue, I saw this this morning and it made me think.. how many people are getting anywhere close to their 'up to' speed?

Just so happens they've got a bit of a bee in their bonnet about it..

[tw199y]

There is one huge flaw with the gadget show campaign it doesnt take into accoutn what they are using to connect. Wireless is going to give a slower result and ethernet. Thats one of the biggest reasons for slow speed I deal with on a daily basis.

[karbon14]

There is one huge flaw with the gadget show campaign it doesnt take into accoutn what they are using to connect. Wireless is going to give a slower result and ethernet. Thats one of the biggest reasons for slow speed I deal with on a daily basis.

really? how's that work then?

[djtoast]

oddly (quite apart from the capping) i get slightly slower speeds with Virgin than I did with NTL, can't think of a good reason why that would be... max rspeed from good servers/hosts before was about a steady 460kbps, now it's about 380kbps or so.

still livable, MP3s in well under a minute, an episode of Heroes in maybe half an hour, so I wouldn't really feel motivated to change to a different ISP on speed grounds.

[0x21]

I have noticed a significant slow down using wireless too, but I can't at all fathom why since the wireless network is several times faster than the ADSL connection, some kind of routing complications or something, I dunno.

[tw199y]

really? how's that work then?

most people that are using wireless are not right beside the router. with distance you geat a speed decrease.

[karbon14]

most people that are using wireless are not right beside the router. with distance you geat a speed decrease.

a speed decrease of 54 down to 24 or 11 for instance? still miles above what your net connection should be though.

feel free to baffle me with science for an actual reason there though.

*edit* just tested it on this laptop and got 4.8 on wireless and 5.1 on wired. on a 24 meg connection with my wireless running at 48 meg.


*further edit* speedtest.net gives me much higher reults that that site and the upload test seems to actually work
wireless

wired

[0x21]

Thats quite a difference between wireless and wired...

Though I don't think its got anything to do with the transfer rate as such (I'm sure sending big files across the network will go at rediculous rates), and just has something to do with the way packets are routed - but to be honest I've never been concerned enough to investigate it any further (and since my ethernet doesnt seem to work anyway on this machine...)

[pANDAS Radio]

on a 24 meg connection with my wireless running at 48 meg.

What difference does that make? Your wireless is = to or > than your connection speed. Would the results change if you limited your wireless speed to 24 meg?

[karbon14]

i have no idea. which is why i mentioned it. twiggy's point was that if your wireless speed drops so will your overall net connection. but mine was running well above the speed my net connection should be, and well above what it actually was and it still dropped off quite a bit.

[Screenager]

well the wireless will have a bandwidth superior to the broadband but if you put the bandwidth completely to one side a packet of data is going to move faster from the router to your application down cabling than over a wireless transmission if you take media environmental factors and overheads into consideration.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the bandwidth result of the speedtest just an extrapolation of the ping response speeds?

honestly i could be wrong but still thats the way I view it

[karbon14]

i'm sure it's a timed upload and download of an mp3 file (at least thats what another speedtest i used to use was.... i'm sure it was speedtest.net though) so that you can't really make any time up by compressing it etc any further.

latency and speed are 2 vastly different things though *waves at satelite broadband*

[McLeary]

I fail to see how anyone who uses wireless can't grasp that it's fairly mince, and considerably shitter than a wired connection.

Speed issues aside, it's plagued with gremlins, and drives me fucking mental.