How crap is your broadband?

[buntyman]

As we surge further into the 21st century with HD streaming, storage clouds, video calling, Iplayers, online gaming and so on, who's being left behind with a balls broadband connection? I live in a small village in North East Fife in Scotland and the maximum speed I can get from any internet provider in my area is 1.5Mb/s with AOL. Even then, I rarely get over 1Mb/s unless it's in the middle of the night so I'm unable to take part in any of the above exciting modern internet uses. In terms of time it takes for me to download anything, it's about 3 hours to download a 20min episode of Beavis and Butthead in standard resolution. It's even worse than ever at the moment so I'm convinced there's some problem with the connection as I'm currently on 0.1Mb/s meaning it takes about a minute to load up this website. Things were so desperate today that I actually went to work this afternoon to watch the Spurs football stream on my computer there. A 1-1 with Wolves was not a suitable reward for my effort.
Does anyone live in a shitter spot for getting the internet than me? Are there still places where you can't even get broadband in the UK?

[legspinner]

0.1 Mb/s? I live in the middle of a field equidistant between Ashford and Folkestone in Kent, with speeds peaking usually at 50 Kb/s.

I effectively can't use this 'internet'. I challenge you to beat this...speed.

[vrailaine]

it's about 3 hours to download a 20min episode of Beavis and Butthead in standard resolution.

If you can handle the quality drop, you can get super low resolution episodes of most animated sitcom type things for 16mb. SD can gotten for about 40mb mkv files too, I think.

I've an okay speed, 7mb/s, I think, doesn't seem much slower than the 20mb/s speed I had in uni, used to be much worse here though. Can't complain too much when two houses down the road can't get broadband through cables[nb]haven't checked up on this in about 2 years[/nb]
...but it disconnects pretty often, which is probably more to do with our shite cabling

[WesterlyWinds]

We're supposed to be getting crazy amounts (50mb, I think) but I've never seen it go above 30, and that was once in the past two years. I can't really complain, though, as I rarely have any trouble doing what I want to do on the internet whereas at least 6 other people who live in the house can barely even stream YouTube. They should have been ultra-cool like me and bought a 30m ethernet cable and trailed it through the house from the modem in my mate's room.

[BlodwynPig]

4.2 Mb/s download, 0.2 Mb/s upload. Using the UK Broadband speed test, there is a map at the end showing your location and relative speeds from different providers. I am on BT, which seems to be average around 4 Mb/s, but Virgin are getting around 20-30 Mb/s.

According to my little blue wireless icon I have 65 Mb/s Übertragungsrate (transmission rate)...does that mean I am being throttled by over an order of magnitude from what I have paid for?

[I accept the terms of the]

No, that's the speed of your wireless connection to the modem. Nothing to do with your Internet connection, really.

[BlodwynPig]

No, that's the speed of your wireless connection to the modem. Nothing to do with your Internet connection, really.

ok, dunderhead is enlightened

[Uncle TechTip]

Also Virgin gets 20Mb because it uses the cable TV network and not the plain old copper wire of the telephone network. 4Mb on a phone line is actually pretty average for most of the UK.

[Dusty Gozongas]

The Virgin connection here has got steadily worse over recent months. Very occasionally I can get 10Mb but the rest of the time it's a crock.

Typical result (tested a few mins ago):

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:39:28 GMT
1st 128K took 2610 ms = 50219 Bytes/sec = approx 418 kbits/sec
2nd 128K took 3181 ms = 41205 Bytes/sec = approx 343 kbits/sec
3rd 128K took 2817 ms = 46529 Bytes/sec = approx 387 kbits/sec
4th 128K took 3574 ms = 36674 Bytes/sec = approx 305 kbits/sec

...which is actually slightly lower than my (generally consistent) average up speed.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I've got a stupid web and walk dongle thing for various very annoying reasons, and whilst it's not too slow most of the time (it'd take about 20 minutes to download an episode of an American tv show) I only get 3 gigabytes bandwith a month, which I always struggle with. It mostly means I can't download anything, only watch a few youtube videos every so often, and the rest goes on random surfing. Even then, by the end of the month I'm always about to run out, and have to monitor my usage very carefully.

[Little Hoover]

Don't you watch as much if not more torrented american tv than me? SMBH?  I thought surely that would have to exceed it.

As I use a laptop, if I'm worried about exceeding my monthly limit, I'll download some stuff using the wi-fi in coffee shops or pubs.

[Jamie Oliver is fat]

Virgin are about to double this to 100mb for free

[Treguard of Dunshelm]

I've got a stupid web and walk dongle thing for various very annoying reasons, and whilst it's not too slow most of the time (it'd take about 20 minutes to download an episode of an American tv show) I only get 3 gigabytes bandwith a month, which I always struggle with. It mostly means I can't download anything, only watch a few youtube videos every so often, and the rest goes on random surfing. Even then, by the end of the month I'm always about to run out, and have to monitor my usage very carefully.

I feel your pain, brother. I've got 5GB a month, thru my 3 dongle, but some months (like this one) that's not enough. I've got just over 1.5GB to last me the next couple of weeks which is balls. Speed has not been to bad recently, but there are spells every few months where it's very slow and sometimes won't connect at all. Thankfully if I need to download large files I can do at work, or my parents.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

My broadband suffers from TOTAL FAILURE of the penis, balls and willy.

[I accept the terms of the]

I feel your pain, brother. I've got 5GB a month, thru my 3 dongle, but some months (like this one) that's not enough. I've got just over 1.5GB to last me the next couple of weeks which is balls. Speed has not been to bad recently, but there are spells every few months where it's very slow and sometimes won't connect at all. Thankfully if I need to download large files I can do at work, or my parents.

What are you paying for that?

You could get a phone on the One plan with Three, which is genuinely uncapped (for now) and tether it to your PC, exactly as if it was a dongle. Might be a better deal. I did this for three months with a Galaxy S II when I was moving house (if you go down this route make sure the phone you choose can tether, which it probably can if it's Android).

[REVEEN!]

The Virgin connection here has got steadily worse over recent months. Very occasionally I can get 10Mb but the rest of the time it's a crock.

Typical result (tested a few mins ago):

...which is actually slightly lower than my (generally consistent) average up speed.

I had the same problem recently, I'm paying for 10Mbits (1.2Mb/s) and it would usually start at that but then start dropping down below 3Mbits within about 5-10 minutes (although sometimes I'd get the full 10Mbits for an hour or two). I eventually tracked it down to the old silver NTL modem that VM had never upgraded and a couple of VM blokes came round and replaced it with with one of those new Netgear hub jobbers which has sorted the problem.

Strangely though I noticed that in the three days between me booking a tech visit and them turning up it started working perfectly again so I cancelled the visit and pretty much immediately it began to fuck up again. A few days later I booked another appointment and again the connection stopped dropping speed the next time I used it.
I'm hoping that it was just a bizarre coincidence rather than Virgin sneakily forcing people to upgrade as the old modems don't work with some new Phorm type spyware that they're implementing.   

[Dusty Gozongas]

It's certainly looking like the modem, as you say. Same thing happened with my old Terayon as it couldn't cope with the speed upgrades. Hadn't considered the Phorm angle, although I suspect that that wouldn't interfere with my intermittent Tor/I2P/VPN sessions[nb]One of the reasons I haven't been too frantic about the low speed. You get used to it with those three.[/nb] - will have to read up on that one :)

[Beep Cleep Chimney]

I'm with Virgin, and generally speaking mine's not too bad.  Average download speed is about 1MB per second at peak times. 

However, where mine seems to fall down is when I just want to watch a fucking YouTube video!

I was trying to watch a 3-minute sketch clip on there the other day, which kept freezing and buffering after a few seconds.  It took about 15 minutes before the bloody thing decided to kick in and download/play.  Ridiculous.

[mook]

is anyone here with be internet? they seem to do the fastest connection in my area, i was just wondering if they were any good or to be avoided. ta.

[I accept the terms of the]

When I was searching for a deal they seemed to be considered the best available, if your exchange was unbundled with them.

Mine wasn't.

[mook]

ta, i'll get onto them. i've been with my current provider for ages and i've just found out the buggers are charging me just shy of £50 a month for internet and line rental.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Check where your nearest exchange is though, because I think Be use ADSL+ and the speed of your line is highly dependent on that.

[rudi]

I'm going to miss Infinity when (if) I finally move from here. I've been spoiled...

[olliebean]

Be is good, but I think O2 is essentially the same connection (they own Be) for a cheaper price. (Significantly cheaper if you're an O2 mobile customer.) O2 do some traffic management, though, so it depends what you're going to be using it for. (Essentially, as far as I can see from http://broadband.o2.co.uk/home/trafficmanagement.jsp, you get crappy speeds for filesharing.) Be does no traffic management at all.

[Big Jack McBastard]

I am equidistant to three exchanges in my area, if you take a plot point from each and triangulate them I'm bang in the middle just far enough from each of them to receive a shitty connection from any of them so I get 1.23Mb DL and something pathetic UL and there's bugger all that will improve the situation bar them building another on my lawn.

[mook]

well, Be seem to be offering a 24meg unlimited smutpipe and phone for £37 a month. i guess i won't get anywhere here that speed though. mind, i've just run the speedtest and on my 8meg connection i get 6.94meg up, so i presume i must be somewhere near the exchange.

[Steve Lampkins]

I've always had good and reliable broadband. I'm slightly unsure how I'd cope without it...

Please tell me that I'm not the only person who would find a lack of decent broadband a deal-breaker when looking for a new place.

[BlodwynPig]

I've always had good and reliable broadband. I'm slightly unsure how I'd cope without it...

Please tell me that I'm not the only person who would find a lack of decent broadband a deal-breaker when looking for a new place.

A nearby corner shop, a loaded top shelf and an understanding shop assistant.

[Steve Lampkins]

A nearby corner shop, a loaded top shelf and an understanding shop assistant.

And it's free?? ;-)

[falafel]

Less than twenty quid a month if you're careful and invest in some laminate.