BT Infinity / Fibre Optic internet connections

[The Region Legion]

Not mentioned: the fact that connection drops once every couple of days (and in fact about 7 times this morning). Otherwise I suppose my connection is pretty good (close to the exchange).

Unfortunately, for some reason Brighton is entirely free of fiber-optic cable with no change in sight.

[mook]

i thought infinity* was due pretty much all over brighton in the next few months?


*there's me assuming infinity is delivered via fibre-optic.

[NoSleep]

Not mentioned: the fact that connection drops once every couple of days (and in fact about 7 times this morning). Otherwise I suppose my connection is pretty good (close to the exchange).

Unfortunately, for some reason Brighton is entirely free of fiber-optic cable with no change in sight.

Who needs fibre-optic with speeds like that?

[wasp_f15ting]

I wish they'd get rid of cable / sky TV and have everything over GB/s like they do in South Korea. It is so much better. Imagine being able to have formula 1, Cricket and Footie all the same screen.. lovely. One day maybe one day.

The biggest difference I've noticed thusfar is viewing 1080p content on youtube which seems to buffer before I fast forward. Perfect for watching good quality Internet shows like the Verge.

[Obel]

[mook]

Who needs fibre-optic with speeds like that?

no idea. we've just changed over to btsomething-or-other last week. they said we should be getting speeds of ~12-18 mbps. but i've just tried that speedtest thing a couple of times and it seems we're getting a bit more.




there does seem to be loads of btopenworld vans parked next to holes in the road all over the sussex at the minute. i think they're up to something.

i like the little animation of the man having a pissing the beachball competition with a pyramid though. never had that kind of shit on a bbc model b let me tell you.

[NoSleep]

Apparently mine (3.72Mb/s) is above average for Surrey (0.4375MBps)[nb]See my next post[/nb][nb]Assuming "Mb/s"="MBps" and not "mbps"[/nb], according to this press release:

http://news.surreycc.gov.uk/2012/03/21/most-surrey-internet-users-have-slower-broadband-than-national-average/

So The Region Legion should count himself extremely lucky.

[El Unicornio, mang]

12-18mbps might be the speed you can actually download things at, speed test doesn't really measure that. (My speed test is about 14 but my download speed is more like 2)

[NoSleep]

You need to make sure you're not mixing up different measures for connection speed.

http://www.numion.com/calculators/units.html

I think the connection speed at speedtest is actually "mbps" (megabits per second) as I can usually achieve downloads of speeds up to 500-600KB/s, according to Net Monitor, which would translate to 4 to 5mbps, and the speedtest tells me 3.72(mbps?), which figures, as things have been a little slower recently.

That means I'm running a little above average for Surrey.

[NoSleep]

12-18mbps might be the speed you can actually download things at, speed test doesn't really measure that. (My speed test is about 14 but my download speed is more like 2)

If your connection speed is 12.83mbps, then your download speed would be 1.6MBps, which tallies with the above.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Aaah, I see, didn't know the mbps/MBps difference. Yeah, I'm looking at download speed of 2 MBps, which would be 16mbps, that ties in with my speed test.

[mook]

ok... erm. what the difference between Mb/s, MBps and mbps? is this just a shift key thing?

edit...

whoops... been answered. seems i like pressing f5 just about as much as hitting the shift key.

[El Unicornio, mang]

MB = megabytes
mb = megabits

[NoSleep]

A byte contains a number of bits.

[Puffin Chunks]

8, to be precise.

[NoSleep]

I was going to post that.

[mook]

does my 64bit laptop have more them bits than my old beeb model b?

does it?

[NoSleep]

I can't imagine the whole internet communicates via 8-bit bytes. Must just be an old standard that's stuck with us.

[MojoJojo]

In most senses yes.

Although I'd guess there is a good chance it's has less actual bits, if you get what I mean.

(as a side note, I seem to remember back in the old modem days, the kbps per second was even more misleading, since they counted some stop/start bits or something, so they were counting 10 bits per byte even though you got 8 bits of data. But this is vaguely remembered and doesn't make any sense now I think about it)

[MojoJojo]

I can't imagine the whole internet communicates via 8-bit bytes. Must just be an old standard that's stuck with us.

It doesn't really. The average packet size is described by imix, although annoying telecom companies get arsey if your packet forwarding rate doesn't meet line rate with 64byte packets.
Everything is described in bytes because that's what programmers are used to, but it's really just a sequence of bits. Wiki's table for the ipv4 header illustrates this well http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_Header#Header.

[Consignia]

Data should be measured in nibbles. More snack size, word.

[MojoJojo]

If only someone could decide how big a word was....

[KLG-7A]

The native byte size varies across computers. It's the wrong word to use for a collection of 8-bits; we should call that an octet.

Some old computers didn't even have even native byte sizes.

Packets are only one layer of the Internet. I wouldn't consider them the fundamental unit of Internet traffic.

[NoSleep]

If only someone could decide how big a word was....

Word.

[NoSleep]

It's the wrong word to use for a collection of 8-bits; we should call that an octet.

I prefer octobit.

[MojoJojo]

The native byte size varies across computers. It's the wrong word to use for a collection of 8-bits; we should call that an octet.

Assuming you mean "native word size", that's not really relevant; it's the smallest data accessible without using logic operations. I can't think of any architecture that can't reference data in byte size. And multiples of bytes.

Anyway, it's the fact everyone is used to bytes which is the issue.

(I write assembler for an ASIC which is sort of bit addressable, but it's all byte based underneath (with a word length of 64bits)

[Al Tha Funkee Homosapien]

Bow mere mortals below my mighty e-peen!

[KLG-7A]

Assuming you mean "native word size", that's not really relevant;

No, I mean byte size. Word size is more about the design of the processor, and what it natively works in below the abstraction of the units of its instructions. Some machines (like DSPs) have non 8-bit bytes as you've defined it above. They address memory in chunks that aren't 8-bits in size. That's why we have CHAR_BITS in limits.h when programming in C.

[Puffin Chunks]

Now come on people, there's no need to make me look foolish with facts and whatnot. Let's just accept that there's 8 bits in a byte and move on.

[KLG-7A]

There are unless you're using a computer from 40 years ago, 40 years from now or one that was specifically designed to make the mooing noises in a children's toy. Those are good odds.