QOTD: How Fast is Your Net Connection?

Despite spending most of our time online and at the computer these days, a major bottle neck is the connection we use to gain access.

In North America, even though broadband is pretty much accessible everywhere, the overall infrastructure is really bogged down. Because we're running much of everything on aging equipment and underlying cabling, speeds are extremely limited.

Despite this, some companies are launching new fiber services, that offer incredible speeds. But even with fiber, we're still lagging behind countries like Japan. Many residents of Japan enjoy speeds of 100 Mbit/sec. or greater. When we see this, it's painfully obvious that our ISPs are totally taking us for a ride, and charging a hefty sum of money for it.

The skinny? U.S. and Canadian Internet users are getting ripped off.

The question of the day is: How fast is your Internet connection?

Those of you reading from more, "privileged" countries, spare us.

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0

techman2000 , March 25, 2009 12:39 AM

Virgin Media 50meg broadband
britain is catching up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WQgEf9F8ow
0

starmate , March 25, 2009 12:51 AM

3meg on a 8meg package
TY BT YOU ABSOLUTE PIECE OF S**T
0

MartinS , March 25, 2009 1:02 AM

I'm from the Netherlands and got a full 100/100mbit connection for €40/£37/$55
0

mi1ez , March 25, 2009 1:31 AM

drag-your-knuckles slow!
punkbuster just kicked me out of quake live slow!
Tonight it's being particularly sucky...
I think I'm on 512k. Don't remember, but we've had it a while without being upgraded. Ping's not normally too bad though.
0

skalagon , March 25, 2009 2:18 AM

Hmmm can someone explain to me how it works that someone in Japan can get internet content from Ireland at a speed of 100mb/s when the fastest connection in Ireland is 7mb/s ??? I realise that they do, I just don't understand how it works.
0

thepeganator , March 25, 2009 3:00 AM

6-8Mbps on Sky max, no download limits.

University gets 100/100, well less in real life but have had 94Mbps download once.
0

rako77 , March 25, 2009 7:20 AM

ha and america thinks they have it bad. I'm from australia, my internet is adsl2+ wich is meant to be 22mb/s but the max i can get to which is just downloading from microsoft is 700kb/s usully average around 100-200kb/s for decent websites(and i have to pay top doller for this conection). then there is no isp that offeres unmetered downloads. not to mention the pruposed internet filtering sceem could slow down our internet even more.
0

wifiwolf , March 25, 2009 7:31 AM

skalagonHmmm can someone explain to me how it works that someone in Japan can get internet content from Ireland at a speed of 100mb/s when the fastest connection in Ireland is 7mb/s ??? I realise that they do, I just don't understand how it works.

We usually download from servers that have more bandwidth than a single irish user. It's that simple. And if we do download from one, we can have more connections to other users all around like peer-to-peer.
I've tested my connection by downloading a full dvd image in less thean an hour with my 24Mbs connection. Surely that's not the 100Mb Max country-wide but that's the much I can get 25€ a month and phone calls included.
0

plasmastorm , March 25, 2009 8:24 AM

Virgin Media 50mb cable
Newsgroups Avg : 2.3 mb/sec download
Bit torrent Avg : 3-400k on most things, up to 2mb on a good seed.

Seems to me that the '50mb' tag is just plain old bull, but still, the best i can get in Edinburgh
0

plasmastorm , March 25, 2009 8:26 AM

P.s.

Quote:
The skinny? U.S. and Canadian Internet users are getting ripped off.

why do we care? yet again the folks reading this site have to point out this is the UK Tom's not the USA.

Sigh...
0

gho3t , March 25, 2009 11:50 AM

Here in NZ, Ive clocked in at 12mbps actual download speed on a 20mb/sec fibre line.
0

rako77 , March 25, 2009 12:56 PM

dam nz even has fibre.
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anonymous@guest , March 25, 2009 2:52 PM

Plasmastorm, that is because Edinburgh hasn't switched over to 50 meg yet and won't until August. Highest speed in Edinburgh is the top business package which is 20mb down and 1mb up rather than the standard 768k up.
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plasmastorm , March 25, 2009 3:58 PM

Weefatbob, cheers for the info
0

anonymous@guest , March 25, 2009 4:20 PM

At home Virgin 10Mb which actually delivers 10Mb almost all the time, but upstream is a piddly
0

Flakes , March 25, 2009 6:13 PM

20Mb Virgin Broadband, on usenet yesterday I was getting 3000KBps(equivalent to 30Mbs) but i normally get the max speed of 20Mb.

from the UK.
0

anonymous@guest , March 25, 2009 6:18 PM

There is a difference between megabytes and megabits you know ;p lines are rated in megabits, download speeds within windows are rated in megabytes. You need to divide megabytes by 8 to get the maximum POTENTIAL download speed. Line quality varies a lot, as do the ISPs equipment so you may be on an 8mbit line, but be lucky to get 4mbit speed for all sorts of reason, distance to the exchange, noise, how high the gain is set at your telco etc etc.
0

Flakes , March 25, 2009 7:00 PM

cheers, but most of the people here already know this....

if i was getting TRUE 20Mb i would be expecting 20,000Kbps(minimum) from usenet.

normally works out..

2Mb - 200Kbps
4Mb - 400Kbps
8Mb - 800Kbps
10Mb - 1000Kbps

and so on, we can get slightly higher figures by downloading off faster servers or when the lines are quiet.
-1

mystikal , March 25, 2009 11:21 PM

Megabit (Mb)
Megabyte (MB)

Learn what the differences are....

Retard.
0

2shea , March 30, 2009 5:09 PM

20 mbits speed here, usually I get 1MB a sec with topdownloads, higher isn´t possible due to distance to the transferhouse thing.

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