Too Fast?

[spligosh]

Everyone seems to be complaining about not being able to acheive full 4Mbit and 10Mbit connections and I quite understand their frustration.

Is anyone, like me, thinking that 1Mbit is quite fast enough thanks and will actually downgrade to the 2Mbit when it becomes available. I, for one, rarely stream stuff, only download a couple of largish files a week (300mb) and find that my browsing experience is fine. Don't game. 4Mbit would be overkill for me. Anyone else in my position?

[hoofner]

Well I'd agree with you that 1mb is enough, infact I'd still be quite happy with a 512. The problem really with TW is the latency, which means online gaming, webradio, video streams etc very rarely work at an acceptable level. Even simple webbrowsing is affected but usually not to the point that pages dont load.

Imo the only reason isps are providing more than 1mb is because they know their customers like to download media illegally. Apart from a small few I cant imagine anyone using the benefits of a 10mbit connection without being a (illegal)filesharer. It reminds me of how Sony complains and sues people for piracy yet manufactures millions of dvd burners, do they really think their vast sales are because joe public likes to back up his pc everyday?

[Graham M]

And with regards to the comment "I don't game" - no games will require anything over 1Meg anyway, infact, they will work fine on 512k the upload speed is the prohibitive bit.

[spacegirl]

Well I'd agree with you that 1mb is enough, infact I'd still be quite happy with a 512. The problem really with TW is the latency, which means online gaming, webradio, video streams etc very rarely work at an acceptable level. Even simple webbrowsing is affected but usually not to the point that pages dont load.

Imo the only reason isps are providing more than 1mb is because they know their customers like to download media illegally. Apart from a small few I cant imagine anyone using the benefits of a 10mbit connection without being a (illegal)filesharer. It reminds me of how Sony complains and sues people for piracy yet manufactures millions of dvd burners, do they really think their vast sales are because joe public likes to back up his pc everyday?

Latency is the biggest killer, but never had any real problems with TW. For example, playing WoW tend to see around 100-200ms, which is okay because it's not-quite-realtime (the bottleneck is at Blizzards end). Playing other online games like Half-Life 2 seems fine as well, with average latency below 50ms - perfect for online gaming of any kind.:disturbd:

Latency doesn't matter when it comes to online radio / TV AT ALL. That's all down to getting a uninterrupted chunk of bandwidth. Latency is the delay in between information being sent over the network and actually arriving. In a fast moving game, a few 10th of a second (100's ms) can mean a game is unplayable or not. This makes no difference to radio or video as delays mean nothing - both are buffered and it doesn't matter if there are a few seconds interruption - the buffer covers that. Cannot do that with online games, they have to be real-time or near as possible. If video playback doesn't work, then you're either playing something that is using too much bandwidth or the server you're communicating with is busy (or something in the network between you and it).

I listen to internet radio all day and it's just fine :)

[RealDiamond]

nope 1 Meg to slow.
AS a quicktime .mov user i have no choice but to sit and wait for the Download as sites now have a transparent PIC covering the Clip RIGHT clicking and downloading no longer works every time only about 25% and How long does 90 megs take to down load on 1 meg connection

PS i guess HD is not of intrest for you as well and have you blocked gifs on your browser as people are using tags bigger than 5Mb on some sites.

[spligosh]

PS i guess HD is not of intrest for you as well and have you blocked gifs on your browser as people are using tags bigger than 5Mb on some sites.

I'm just saying that at the moment 1mbit is fast enough - I am interested in HD but to my television - not my computer and as for Gifs - I can see a leg pull a mile away!!

I think I see myself as an average user. I do download a 50 min H264 video twice a week but I can do it while I'm doing something else - un-computer related. I do a fair amount of browsing and I do enjoy gaming - but I've got an XBox for that.

I'm also not saying that heavy users should be banned or anything as extreme as that - just that some of us are light users ;)

[danielf]

I'm just saying that at the moment 1mbit is fast enough - I am interested in HD but to my television - not my computer and as for Gifs - I can see a leg pull a mile away!!

I think I see myself as an average user. I do download a 50 min H264 video twice a week but I can do it while I'm doing something else - un-computer related. I do a fair amount of browsing and I do enjoy gaming - but I've got an XBox for that.

I'm also not saying that heavy users should be banned or anything as extreme as that - just that some of us are light users ;)

To be honest, I think at present 1 meg is sufficient for the large majority of users. I'm on 4 meg Blueyonder atm (recently got the free upgrade from 1 meg), and I like it (Browsing is faster than on 1 meg). One meg would still be sufficient for me, but I like the faster browsing, and I have no need to save a few quid, so I will stay put.

Having said that, I did download 20 Gig this month in streaming video from the Olympics, and I am looking forward to higher quality feeds that 1 meg would struggle with.

[Ignition]

nope 1 Meg to slow.
AS a quicktime .mov user i have no choice but to sit and wait for the Download as sites now have a transparent PIC covering the Clip RIGHT clicking and downloading no longer works every time only about 25% and How long does 90 megs take to down load on 1 meg connection

PS i guess HD is not of intrest for you as well and have you blocked gifs on your browser as people are using tags bigger than 5Mb on some sites.

Anyone who sticks a 5MB image on their website without a serious amount of warning that it's high bandwidth should be shot, that is absolutely unnecessary, most web pages in full aren't much more than a couple of 100kB.

MPEG 4 will calm down the bandwidth requirements of HD I hope, current internet doesn't really work for HD apart from full rated ADSL2+.

Yes I have way over 1Mbit, I'm impatient :)

[RealDiamond]

yes H264 Is what all .mov are now to be encoded in. but with a screen res of 1440x 960, i have to sqint at apple.com normal trailers. ;)

[Martyn]

i think its download speed, if i need to download a heavy file, i have to wait for it to download, n nets to slow to do anything else with such as play games.. etc.. so higher download speed, faster download will go, and the quicker i can get on with what ever..

[Graham M]

i think its download speed, if i need to download a heavy file, i have to wait for it to download, n nets to slow to do anything else with such as play games.. etc.. so higher download speed, faster download will go, and the quicker i can get on with what ever..

Im confused to how this post fits this jigsaw puzzle of a thread...:dunce:

[Martyn]

Im confused to how this post fits this jigsaw puzzle of a thread...:dunce:few people was saying they don't care about the speed n going to down grade saying that, 1mb is enough.. etc etc..