Does anyone know of any way of checking a broadband connection? ours is supposed to be 8meg (whatever that means!) but if my sons playing online it puts my computer to about the speed of a dial up, or if im downloading he cant play an online game. surely this cant be right

http://www.speedtest.net/

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html

thank you

8Mb is really a maximum theoretical data rate so anyone getting close to that is very lucky. For most people it will be significantly less.

with most online games it is not possible to play with a decent ping while downloading. best to pause any d/l while he plays.

When you say 'Downloading' if you are using P2P software like BitTorrent - you need to limit the upload speed - otherwise you swamp your connection and requests for web pages etc dont get through properly - This is the same for the Download speed - limit it to a set speed. This way theres spare bandwidth for games on the line.

For upload - set it to 10k.

Download - you will need to see what your max download speed is and decide how much to leave for everyone else!!!

8Mb is really a maximum theoretical data rate so anyone getting close to that is very lucky. For most people it will be significantly less.

Yeah my 8mb is actually 3.3Mb :rolleyes:

8 meg is a con when demand is high they share the speed out this giving you a slower connection, i have had this for 18 months and been as low as 36kbps so i'm going back to my 2mb connection

8 meg is a con when demand is high they share the speed out this giving you a slower connection, i have had this for 18 months and been as low as 36kbps so i'm going back to my 2mb connection

 

 

Well looking at it like that it's always a con. They oversubscribe 20:1 on business and 40 or 50:1 on home service contracts. Subscribing to the 8Mb service effectively means that they take the 2Mb limit off and allow you to run to 8Mb max - if it's available ....

I've just had my 4Mb Virgin/NTL cable upgraded to 20Mb and the service is ridiculous.

Any time from about 5pm until midnight I'm only getting 1.2Mb!

After 1am I can get 19Mb though which is awesome but it really was way faster on 4Mb most of the time I use it.

Doing some reports then going to have words with them as this is a total rip off.

And it ain't gonna change much until BT deliver VDSL or fibre to the home.

its poor that they can charge us for 8 meg or 20 meg and you dont get it how can that be right. i wonder if i install someones boiler and tell them some days you might have hot water and some days you wont i could get away with it

Nah, this is like installing one boiler for the whole street and telling people that at busy times they may not get much hot water. But don't worry, if you pay more then you have bigger pipes, so that in the middle of the night your hot water will arrive really quickly ....

Sky finally managed to get my new connection sorted . Went live last night and these are my speeds at about 2pm today :

 

Just done mine and got this result..... this any good?

 

 

That`s very close to mine , bud , so I`m guessing you`re paying for 8Mb as well ?

i had a connection with enta.net when i was in the uk and i had guarenteed 1mb service always never ever dropped.

Nah, this is like installing one boiler for the whole street and telling people that at busy times they may not get much hot water. But don't worry, if you pay more then you have bigger pipes, so that in the middle of the night your hot water will arrive really quickly ....

 

LOL :rofl:

It would be funny if it wasn't so true!

I really don't know how they have been allowed to get away with it really.

They should be made to give average speed figures attained and charge on that basis.

I didn't mind so much on 4meg only getting 2meg sometimes but paying for 20meg and getting 1meg MOST of the time really is daylight robbery :rant:

but they really think there is nothing wrong with what they are doing. in my area bt share our connection at 50-1 so all day long i get 7meg, then when everyone comes home from school or work about 5 O'clock it can drop to anything, 36kbps once but on average 800kbps. I have phoned bt and they dont care "your on upto 8meg" is all they say :xxx:

its poor that they can charge us for 8 meg or 20 meg and you dont get it how can that be right. i wonder if i install someones boiler and tell them some days you might have hot water and some days you wont i could get away with it

 

They are not charging you for 8mb, it's 'up to 8mb'. No guarantees what speed you will get. Even if your line is good enough to connect to the exchange at 8mb, you won't be able to do much with it with most ISP's anyway. You will either have a hard limit on how much you can download, or they will throttle your speed if they deem you to be taking the piss. This is because their backbone bandwidth is oversold massively, much more than 50:1. You cannot blame them for this, wholesale bandwidth costs are hugely more expensive than the end-user pays for it. For example A single BT central line costs an ISP £26,000 for each 155Mbps, that will pay for 19 customers who use their 8mb connection to its fullest potential. So by using your 8mb flat out all the time would cost your ISP £1368 a month, so for your 20 quid of whatever you are getting a bargain!

yeah but when they try selling you broadband they dont say you can get upto 8 meg but most of the time you'll only have 500-800kbps. they told me when i was on 2meg that never dropped "would you like to upgrade to "up to 8 meg". now how can this be an upgrade when its cr@p. when i phoned them to upgrade they said to me, as they do to everyone it takes 10 days for the speed to stabilise and this is what your speed should be. i would like to know this too when i use any speedtester i get all the same results (using 4 differant ones) 500-800kbps but when i use bt's own one, which is the only one they take note of it takes along time until my Assured Rate IP profile comes up which is 7150kbps the the tester speeds up then and gives me a good reading E.G 6-6.5mbps but this only lasts for seconds and my speed goes slow again. so when you phone bt to complain they get you to use there tester and you will always get a good speed. how can that be right

We had a leaflet for 100Mb fiber line the other day and for 60Euros it isnt too bad aslong as you can sustain that speed. Will have to check the fine print

Love my dedicated 8meg connection

 

We just upgraded to 30Mb and 150cable for the equalivant of £15. im a happy bunny

Mines supposed to be an 8Mg connection, but dives down quite a lot early evening. Although I've never got above 6Mg........ Then I don't mind because I receive it from Orange FREE with my mobile!