Why only 512Kbps upload? Why not 1Mbps?

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by AbyssUnderground

I was talking to a friend the other day and he said that the NTL 10Mbps is more unreliable because of the upload speed being "not sufficient enough" for downloading at 10Mbps.

What I want to know is: is it true?

Also, why dont NTL give us 1Mbps upload? Its cable so it should be able to support a very high speed, not like ADSL.

Id kill for 1Mbps upload but why wont NTL give us it?

Why do you repeat this question when you already know the answer.

512kbit is more then enough to send acks to download at 10mbit.
The technology used doesnt support high upload speeds as you would like.
High upload speeds promote commercial use on a residental product.

I thought your website was fine and dandy with 20kB upload?

---------- Post added at 22:51 ---------- Previous post was at 22:48 ----------

Originally Posted by AbyssUnderground

Is there any word when 2Mbps customers will get the chance to upgrade yet?

Yes it was mentioned in the 10meg thread over a month ago, they were able to upgrade before actual top tier customers. Check the tier migration page.

I was pleasantly surprised with a 512kbit upload I was expecting 400kbit maximum considering ntl's recent conservative upload speeds and telewest doesn't offer that much.

[AbyssUnderground]

The technology probably does support it they just dont want to give you so much upload speed. Probably to stop people like me doing what I do, running servers.

Yes my site is fine on 20kb/s (actually ive limited it to 10kb/s) but the more the better. I intend to have downloads on my site. 20kb/s is very slow compared to todays internet speeds.

Cable is capable of speeds in excess of 10Mbps so if they can do it for download why not upload as well?

(Some stupid sod would probably turn around and say "turn the cable around and have upload not download" )


As for 2Mbps, I meant when will 2Mbps customers be able to upgrade for free, not pay an extra £12.

[JonathanLH]

google for "docsis" and read all about it
it was initally designed for cable tv, not broadband

[ailean]

As mentioned the cable network is physically designed for downstream broadcast not upstream ip traffic. There is a very limited amount of upstream available so giving people >512 could quickly flood it and everything would grinde to a halt. I think later DOCSIC versions have better support but without replacing ALL the network hardware you aren't going to get huge uploads. If you wanted to switch the entire cable network to an ethernet based system you'd have to have Gigibit to the house socket (very expensive! ), cable at the moment is delivering something like >150Mb/s to your door, including all the TV etc services.

Besides it's NOT a business service! If you want to flood my home network with your server uploads go get a business service, NTL will happily sell you one (I've used them before, cheaper then BT ).

As to the 2MB upgrades, from the last stuff I heard from NTL it looked like they'd changed there package lineup for next year to be;

1. 10Mb, 75G/m cap, Broadband+, £34.99
2. 2Mb, Unlimited, Broadband+, £24.99
3. 1Mb, Unlimited, £17.99

This would make more sence as it's less confusing then adding another 2-3 tiers and there current network isn't really upto switching everyone to 10Mb, but heh when have NTL made sence.

[AbyssUnderground]

I was looking at business packages but again, the upload is pathetically slow. A leased line is way too expensive (god knows why, maybe someone can explain that too).

My only option would be to go with an adsl provider that gives 8mbps/1mbps but that I dont want.
1. more expensive
2. more equipment to buy
3. not garunteed speed
4. from what ive researched my local exchange is only at 2mbps

[JonathanLH]

leased lines are 1:1 contended on to the isp's backbone, and it can a seperate cable from your business site to the local nearest pop site.
i rent a dedicated server on 10mbit unmetered in the usa for $100 (about £55) a month, and it's always maxed out both ways

[AbyssUnderground]

Well there is the problem you see. I just dont have £55 a month to spare. And Id rather is wasnt co-located either. The whole reason of me having a server at home is that its easier to transfer large changes to the site and files. FTP is slow enough as it is on 200Kbps upload.

I have about 2GB of main website data and over 70gb of other files that need to be on the server too. As you can imagine it would take a hell of a long time to send over FTP.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by AbyssUnderground

Well there is the problem you see. I just dont have £55 a month to spare. And Id rather is wasnt co-located either. The whole reason of me having a server at home is that its easier to transfer large changes to the site and files. FTP is slow enough as it is on 200Kbps upload.

I have about 2GB of main website data and over 70gb of other files that need to be on the server too. As you can imagine it would take a hell of a long time to send over FTP.

I am bemused as to how you host a site with 10kB/s upload but it requires over 70GB of content to be present on it.

If you actually need 70GB of content to be available on it chances are you're going to fall foul of the restrictions on uploading, etc, and the traffic a private website is permitted and should really consider hosting.

However hosting with 70GB of space isn't the cheapest. Dunno about our torrent seeding friend's warez box he can probably advise you though.

[AbyssUnderground]

Dont worry, its not warez. As I said in another post, I do a lot of graphic design and all the files I make need to be kept for people I make them for. All of them need to be available at all times should I need to edit any one of them or download it for another design.

I suppose 512Kbps will have to do me until I can (if ever) afford a dedicated server with the amount of space i need and unmetered bandwidth.

Originally Posted by Ignition

I am bemused as to how you host a site with 10kB/s upload but it requires over 70GB of content to be present on it.

You noticed that as well. Hell of a lot of space for a not for profit server. .


Edit just seen the post above

[hokkers999]

Originally Posted by AbyssUnderground

Well there is the problem you see. I just dont have £55 a month to spare. And Id rather is wasnt co-located either. The whole reason of me having a server at home is that its easier to transfer large changes to the site and files. FTP is slow enough as it is on 200Kbps upload.

I have about 2GB of main website data and over 70gb of other files that need to be on the server too. As you can imagine it would take a hell of a long time to send over FTP.

Seems like the solutions quite simple really 1. BUY a business line. 2. Keep the 70gig stored locally 3. Upload only the CHANGES Of course, it could be that you really need to upload 70 GIG of graphics files on a regular basis. Yeah right. I shoot 16bit raw and a tiff file is only 35meg, so that's 2000 of those images. Of course when they are shrunk from 3000x2000x24bit to WEB images lets say they shrink to 3meg (trying to give you the benfeit of the doubt here) then that's only 20000 images. @ 350k/image that's 200000 of them. Who are you trying to kid.

[AbyssUnderground]

Photoshop (.psd) files can become very large when you have lots of layers on them. All 70gb needs to be accessible because of the amount of people I design for. If they need something changing I download the file to do it. As I do most of my designing away from home, it becomes difficult if I cant get to it.

And Ive tried using an external HD but ive damaged 2 drives carrying them around and lost 50gb of data both times.

These files arent limited to 10KB/s, they get the full 25KB/s bandwidth when I download them.


Just beleive me, I need this 70gb to be hosted, and it has to be on my home server. I cant and wont use professional hosting because of many complications including uploading all of the data to begin with.

[Chrysalis]

The cheapest and most realistic option for you is probably SDSL, the crunch point is ultimately you have to raise your budget. Upstream bandwidth costs more for the isp to provide then downstream bandwidth it is also much more catastrophic if upstream is saturated since it makes downstream plummet to a small slice of its max speed and causes all sorts of latency problems. I dont see anything reasonable in your request for asking for a big upload pipe for under £30 a month it just isnt viable.

[AbyssUnderground]

Like I said earlier, Id sacrafice my download to get a better upload. But as people have told me; not possible.