Virgin is UK's fastest ISP, TalkTalk slowest, Netflix says

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/homecinema/v...says-50011972/

The streaming service has published the average speeds achieved by the UK's major broadband floggers in July, and the results make for interesting reading. Virgin Media comes out on top, with an average speed of 2.63Mbps, while BT is in second place with a 2.4Mbps average.

Netflix says the ratings "reflect the average performance of all Netflix streams on each ISP's network", so peak performance of any given network could be much higher -- but when compared, the ratings do give an impression of which networks are pulling their weight.

Anyone care to comment?I'm sure someone will point out this is wrong..

[Gary L]

Who TF is Everything Everywhere?

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by Gary L

Who TF is Everything Everywhere?

I searched for Everything Everywhere on Google and this was the top hit

http://ee.co.uk/

second was
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EE_%28t...ons_company%29

[jcw00]

Originally Posted by Gary L

Who TF is Everything Everywhere?

You mean EE (Orange & T-Mobile)

[qasdfdsaq]

No, he means Everything Everywhere.

Everything Everywhere != EE != T-Mobile != Orange.

---------- Post added at 20:17 ---------- Previous post was at 20:14 ----------

Originally Posted by Maggy J

Anyone care to comment?I'm sure someone will point out this is wrong..

You forgot the bit that says these are "average speeds achieved by the UK's major broadband floggers".

Curiously the numbers are a bit... well unrepresentative. Only 2.63Mbps on the nation's fastest ISP is rather unimpressive. And the difference between the fastest and slowest is barely 20%.

Think of it another way as far as Netflix is concerned, VM, most of whom's customers are on a 30Mbps or higher service is only 20% faster than TalkTalk, most of whom's customers are on an up to 16Mbps service.

You can also say the slowest ISP today is faster than Virgin Media was 7 months ago. Which is also horseshit but it's what the graph shows

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

No, he means Everything Everywhere.

Everything Everywhere != EE != T-Mobile != Orange.

You are right. However, EE, T-Mobile and Orange are names under which Everything Everywhere trade, so they are not totally different.

You forgot the bit that says these are "average speeds achieved by the UK's major broadband floggers".

Curiously the numbers are a bit... well unrepresentative. Only 2.63Mbps on the nation's fastest ISP is rather unimpressive. And the difference between the fastest and slowest is barely 20%.

Think of it another way as far as Netflix is concerned, VM, most of whom's customers are on a 30Mbps or higher service is only 20% faster than TalkTalk, most of whom's customers are on an up to 16Mbps service.

Depends how they arrive at that figure. If they do a proper speed test, then there is cause for concern. If, however, the figures are based on how fast their streams are sent to the clients, the the bit rate of the streams may well be a limiting factor as they are not going to want to stream data to the client too long before it's needed as the user may to able to decode any cache.

[Kabaal]

When i used to use the web browser for Netflix it would spend most of the time down at ~300KB/s occasionally spiking up to 5MB/s to buffer more as needed so the average speed would be pretty low. No idea what we use through the WDTV and apps, they're 1080p so use more data but i imagine it's the same thing with spending most of it's time at low speeds with the odd spike to buffer.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Stuart

You are right. However, EE, T-Mobile and Orange are names under which Everything Everywhere trade, so they are not totally different.

Indeed, Everything Everywhere is the official name of the parent company, whereas the other three are trading or brand names. While the corporate entity may be the same, the actual service(s), level of service, and products you get access to will vary depending on which one you "signed up" to.

Depends how they arrive at that figure. If they do a proper speed test, then there is cause for concern. If, however, the figures are based on how fast their streams are sent to the clients, the the bit rate of the streams may well be a limiting factor as they are not going to want to stream data to the client too long before it's needed as the user may to able to decode any cache.

That is indeed what I was getting at - most of these streaming services seldom stream at the full speed of the connection, so the results will be limited in part by the speed of the stream, and may also be limited by the customer's choice of what stream they choose to begin with. If all TalkTalk customers were to choose a higher bitrate stream for example, it may be that TT would end up with a higher average speed than VM. It's also not unheard of for streams to adapt to different bitrates according to many factors, and some sites even force lower bitrates for specific ISPs or browsers.

All in all, the graphs may be nice to look at, but not much can be said for scientific accuracy without a detailed description of method.

[MalteseFalcon]

Been using Neflix for a couple of months, and apart from once have had no trouble with speed watching it. LoveFilm though is another matter.

[alanbjames]

i have to say Talk Talk greatly improved a friends ADSL speed here for them.

They were with the post office ADSL and was told max their line could get was around 3mb. After a year they switched to Talk Talk on a better deal and they now get over 7mb.

[craigj2k12]

2.4 < 2.63

Big win for Virgin Media

[welshycarysrees]

Carephone warehouse network is really bad. I have a friend who was on AOL which is same network as Talk Talk and was getting a measly 3mb.

They switched to Sky LLU and now they get 11mb.

[denphone]

Originally Posted by craigj2k12

2.4 < 2.63

Big win for Virgin Media

Well a wins a win Craig as Sir Alex Ferguson famously said.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by craigj2k12

2.4 < 2.63

Big win for Virgin Media

Derp.

I'd be curious to see a similar round of stats from Youtube. There, BT's average is 7.87, UK's average is 10.12, Orange's average is 3.98 and I'm 42.68...

[craigj2k12]

i would imagine VMs would be alot lower than others, including adsl