Internet Access

[jperkosk]

Yesterday my phone company has switched the internet/telephone service in my office from WiMax to optical fiber

Now I finally feel like I'm in the 21st century

[sutty]

Cool. Here is mine.



Unreal isn't it.

And you thought it took you a long time to upload a GPH3 movie to youtube!

Cheers

Sutty

[jperkosk]

I was getting consistent ~1.8Mb/s down and on a good day 150-200kb/s up over WiMax before .
Now in March they finished laying optical fiber in my office area and I changed the service to symmetrical 20Mb/s for $5/month more compared to what I was paying before. On the top of it they gave me 50Mb/s free for the first month, just to get me to salivate more. Haven't uploaded anything to YT yet, but uploading the photos to HF takes no noticeable time now, it's same as copying it from one directory on my HD to another Out of desperation I even connected to friend's redistribution service over 2km point-to-point WiFi, but as he can't give me a lot of bandwidth at reasonable cost it was only a temporary solution. Below my upload speed history:

[sutty]

Git.

No fibre down our road, and unlikely to be laid for about 6 properties in a mile!

If there was fibre I would switch my TV service and broadband from Sky in an instant, as they are nothing short of criminal in their charging. They know they have a captive audience, with a product that is wanted, in an almost monopoly position. In my case, in the absence of fibre, it is a monopoly, and I object to paying £93 per month, but feel I have no choice as I need to live sport in full HD.

True it is still my choice to have it and pay, but I could probably get the whole lot from an alternate supplier for about £30, with much faster internet, if only fibre came down our road.

Cheers

Sutty

[Luke Warmwater]

Originally Posted by sutty

In my case, in the absence of fibre, it is a monopoly, and I object to paying £93 per month, but feel I have no choice as I need to live sport in full HD.

True it is still my choice to have it and pay, but I could probably get the whole lot from an alternate supplier for about £30, with much faster internet, if only fibre came down our road.

Cheers

Sutty

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I'm on Sky, full package with HD....for just under £50 per month!
True, I am only paying £2 for the full sports package, but £93!!!!!!!!!!!! How on earth do they add that up??????

Do what I did. Ring up and ask to cancel certain elements. When they ask why, tell them it's because it is too expensive. Then wait while they put you through to "Disconnections" and listen while the guy brings the price down rather than lose your business (hence my £2 per month for all the Sky Sports channels).

I feel your pain when it comes to being remote. No chance of Virgin down here. I can't even get mains gas! When I moved in in 2003, I shocked the neighbours by going all modern, getting rid of the coal fire and the coal fired boiler, and having oil installed!

(Bad move!! Oil for heating was £0.21 per litre then. I just filled the tank last week at £0.67 per litre. Do you hear me crying in sympathy about gas bills going up by "an incredible 25% in the last 10 years"? - no chance!! 1,200 litres in a tank at 3 tank fulls a year......ouch!
I'd look at solar if we ever got any daylight....)

[sutty]

It is absolutely genuine. £93.75 / month. Spent 2.5 hours on the phone with them, threatening to cancel, and they would not budge, even when I said, right, that's it, come and take it all out. They must have a big sign on their screen saying, "No fibre area".

Of course I had to retract my request, and crawl away defeated. Two and a half hours, who'd a thought it. Time I will never get back, and no progress, like everyone else tells me they can get. Sick of hearing it, no offence Luke.

Full package, Sky plus HD, multiroom, Phone, Broadband.



Oh well, off out now to drown my sorrows and waste some more money.

See you later chaps.

Cheers

Sutty

[Tomstoy2]

Ouch! Oh well, just remember that bending over and grabbing your ankles is good stretching exercise for your back!

No fiber here, either. Pisses me off.

[Luke Warmwater]

Sutty, what's the Extra Subscription at £10.25 (is it multi-room)?

And how come they charge extra for phone and internet? Thought that was included? They advertise Basic TV, phone and internet for £26 don't they? Then it is just Movies, Sports and HD on top....shouldn't be over £90!

Go Freeview with Top-Up.....

[sutty]

Yes, 10.25 is multi room, and so it was whatever, 70 ish, but then BT were literally ripping me off for internet, so I spent 2 hours with them discussing why it should cost me £45 per month for what Sky could do for 20, ish. They too would not budge, not an inch, so even though I had been happy with the service, the fact that the price was so much more I told them to sling their hook and switched to sky for £20. Phone and internet for about £20, instead of £45, I thought I had done well, lol.

Cheers

Sutty
EDIT: Oh, and yes of course they advertise that. It is always cheaper for new customers, instead of those with loyalty. The whole thing sucks!

[wulfrun]

Sutty,

Virgin are a mixed blessing, I got 15ms ping, 24.77Mbs d/l and 1.95Mbs u/l. Heavily d/l biased because they've just never upgraded that. I'm also paying about half what you are (no sky sports/movies though) for TV/'net/unlimited phone.

The downside to cable is that there's little competition and when things go wrong (not infrequently enough!) they aren't too hot. Indian call-centres (usually) with people whose English leaves a lot to be desired and whose technical knowledge is close to nil (if a re-set doesn't fix it, they're clueless and they insist you do it, even though you insist you already have!). When it works, it's great apart from the slow-ish u/l. When it goes wrong, it can be serious grief. I've just had to have the V-box replaced due to a bizarre fault that they couldn't diagnose remotely (randomly ignoring the set-box remote control commands). The service guy tried three new ones before he got one that worked!

[jperkosk]

Hehehe my fiber optic system got upgraded to 200Mbps @ no extra cost

All my switches in the office are 100Mbps, so my wired network saturates way before Internet access does, isn't it weird?



Looking for 36-port 1Gbps switch right now to replace obsolete hardware and get full 200Mbps Internet access from all PCs in my office

[sutty]

Grrr,

[sutty]

Just ran an equivalent test. Download 5, upload 0.6. Awesome.

[jperkosk]

It can be fun watching full HD 60fps clip from GPH3 uploading to YT Sunday morning (when their servers are less loaded) at close to 20Mbps, it's close to real time, meaning 1min video takes 1min to upload

[sutty]

My 5 minute videos take up to about 6 hours to upload.

[jperkosk]

You may need a QVGA camera

[sutty]

Set to ultra low res QQ mode, and it would probably still take longer than yours, lol.

Cheers

Sutty

[jperkosk]

Replaced a sophisticated 100Mbps router with temporary D-Link multimedia 1Gbps router. The switches are still of 100Mbps variety, expecting 48-port 1Gbps switch to show up on Wednesday. There is a marked improvement, so the router was limiting the speed:

[Luke Warmwater]

I find that when my connection is running a bit slow, a short walk 3 miles out of the village to the exchange where I wind up the clockwork gubbins....and it all runs faster for the next 2 days!

Mind you, I could make a hard copy of the email I was sending and deliver by hand en route.....

The price of living in the boonies.....


....we don't even have mains gas here, so I consider electricity and an internet connection a luxury!

[jperkosk]

We finally got a new 1Gb router configured so naturally the boss got a direct port on the router rather than going through one of the 100Mb switches (the new general 48 port 1Gb switch is supposed to show up later today). Glad to report my cabled Ethernet is no longet limiting my Internet access :