Rip off 20 MEGS?

[dl1]

Can anyone explain.

I pay £37 for a 20 MEG and the guy next door pays £18 from BT for his 8 MEG broadband.

Speed tests!
02-10-2007 08:24 AM j-speed 3868 Kbps 370 Kbps New Jersey, USA btcentralplus.com
02-10-2007 07:21 AM j-speed 3572 Kbps 582 Kbps New Jersey, USA ntl.com
01-10-2007 10:42 PM j-speed 855 Kbps 495 Kbps New Jersey, USA ntl.com

[SteveU]

How much of your 20 Meg do you actually get and how much of his 8 Meg does he actually get on a speedtest?

[WillPS]

Speed Testing on US servers is a bad way of getting an indication of your line speed. Infact, speed testing isn't all to conclusive full-stop.

Your neighbour will NOT get an 8Mb service unless you live very close to an exchange.

I live in the middle of Nottingham with an exchange within a mile and with ADSL I'd only be able to get around 1.5Mb (some sites are telling me I can get 4.5Mb now which judging by my neighbours connection is just a big lie).

Virgin, however, can pipe me a comparitably solid 20Mb line even regardless of my distance from Diamond Plaza.

If you're not happy with the price and you want to move, give customer service a ring, tell them you're leaving and they'll offer you a "retention deal". You'll probably end up paying around £20/pm.

[dl1]

Ok Ive been with NTL for years over the last year I have found that speeds generally have become much worse. I tried using a proxy and this gave a dramatic increase in my speeds up to 15 Megs on downloads but all the old proxys have now been switched off. Maybe it's some kind of local issue to the Stockport area. No I haven't been downloading anything recently!

Personally I think comparing speeds to distant servers gives a better picture on the state on the ISP and how good their pipe or connction is the the web in general.

Maybe I'll give India a call and go through the inane script!

[fatassmichael]

dl1, webcache.virginmedia.com port 8080, is still an active proxy, if you want to use one.
With regards to testing speed, browse to http://gamefiles.blueyonder.co.uk , click on demos, and choose two large files to download simultaneously, then add the transfer rates together. That will give you a much better indication of achievable speed.

[dl1]

Thanks I tried that proxy doesn't give me any improvement I was using one of the old colchester proxys now defunct. which gave me fantastic speeds until last week!

[Richy99]

Personally I think comparing speeds to distant servers gives a better picture on the state on the ISP and how good their pipe or connction is the the web in general.



that depends on the ISP's peering which most isps will then say once it is off their networks it isnt their fault

[SOSAGES]

just be gratefull you are not on ADSL and have to deal with BT.

[Graham M]

Personally I think comparing speeds to distant servers gives a better picture on the state on the ISP and how good their pipe or connction is the the web in general.

I'm sorry but that's a load of rubbish, the server in question could have 5-6 different ISPs in between you and them, once it has left the ISP that your ISP has a peering with, there is absolutely no control!

[dl1]

That's as maybe but I can only say how it is, NTL consistently give poor results to distant servers when I compare to other providers yet I am supposedly on a higher speed connection.
Sure I agree NTL should be able to get high speeds within their own network if they can't get that right we might as well give up now!

[Paul]

If you want to test your speed within VM's network (it's not NTL anymore ;)) then use our speedtest (on the Navbar at the top of every page) - it's hosted on the internal VM network.

---------- Post added at 08:48 ---------- Previous post was at 08:46 ----------

As an example, this is what I get this morning on my 20M line ;

Wed, 3 Oct 2007 07:47:07 UTC

Test 1: 1024K took 422 ms = 2426.5 KB/sec, approx 19994 Kbps, 19.53 Mbps
Test 2: 1024K took 437 ms = 2343.2 KB/sec, approx 19308 Kbps, 18.86 Mbps
Test 3: 1024K took 422 ms = 2426.5 KB/sec, approx 19994 Kbps, 19.53 Mbps
Test 4: 2048K took 859 ms = 2384.2 KB/sec, approx 19646 Kbps, 19.19 Mbps

Overall Average Speed = approx 19736 Kbps, 19.28 Mbps

[Dark Fiber]

VM's network (it's not NTL anymore ;))
Time to change the services info in your profile then? :)