SpeedTest; What you at?

[1616six]

I dont even know what im paying for? How do I find out?!

All I know is that it's BT total. haha

[rocker8742]

Brilliant speeds


Oops made it worse

[Ed Doe]

[rocker8742]

Lowest speed wins right?

[cwspellowe]

Wireless on an older Virgin 50Mb connection. Speeds not yet doubled in the area.

Phil your upload is still at the 50Mb rate, the re-tiering isn't complete yet but you'll get 10Mb upload after the migration later this year/early 2013. Forf now you still have the 50Mb upstream rate.

Also bear in mind speed test results are a load of crap, it's based on so many factors like how loaded the server you're testing from is. I've installed 100Mb packages and got speedtest results of 2Mb before, then used a proper FTP speed test and got bang on the money.

As for "more fibre" on the network, that's a load of bollocks. The telecomms backbone of the UK is all fibre and it has been for donkeys years. Our 10Gb business broadband uses the same stuff as the residential stuff. Along with mobile telecomms and BT infinity. Any "bandwidth" is shared and leased between companies. Hardly any new fibre gets installed, it just gets borrowed. Cabinet equipment gets upgraded though, so with BT you got ADSL followed by ADSL2+ and ADSLMax, all affecting speeds. The BT Wholesale network will never compete with fibre and HFC though, hence BT launching infinity. Only real benefit of that over Virgin is the upload speed though.

Fibre stuff's awesome though, it's an area I want to specialise in one day. Fibre engineers get paid £1500 a WEEK in places like Dubai! And one fibre strand can handle 100,000 phone calls simultaneously, as opposed to 100,000 individual copper phone lines. Mental.

And the SuperHub? Pretty crap cheap Netgear rubbish tbh. But the CAN be made to work. Issues with wireless channels aren't router specific though. Channels 12 and 13 don't really work with most commercial equipment, they're crap choices. Pretty much all the channels you need from an interference point of view are 1, 6 and 11. Anything else inbetween crosses over and interferes, so if those three channels don't work well the rest won't either...

[Niall]

Pellowe am I correct in thinking that bt have had fibre for their business customers for years?
I did some work at bt tower a few years back. As you can imagine security was well strict and we had a guard following us constantly. Working through all the standard exchanges and the place was truly massive. Apparently that exchange is the biggest in the uk providing most of central London.
Then worked round to their fibre servers (or what ever they are). Was having a chat with the guard and he was saying one of the on site engineers was saying it was all close to basically collapsing. They had far out sold what they could provide and couldnt expand because the towers a listed building and they had run out of room to store more equipment. Wether that's true or just Chinese whispers I don't know but thought it was a pretty epic fail!

[cwspellowe]

Sounds about right Niall. BT pioneered fibre technology but never implemented it on the same scale as companies like United Artists, Cablecom, NTL etc. Bear in mind Virgin as a media brand has only been around for a few years, before that it was private companies leasing the network for TV only, followed by relatively shit broadband and phone. Now everyone's realised the possibilities on a public scale and there's just not enough to go around!

Virgin got there first though and BT will have some catching up to do. We have a contract with Motorola to develop our fibre equipment at the headends and it's constantly being upgraded and replaced. Back in the analogue days there were rooms upon rooms of networking cards, amps, cooling towers and stuff, now it's been shrunk down to about 5% of the size. No idea how big BT tower is compared to one of our national headends at Knowsley or Bromley but it's probably impressive, i've only ever been allowed in the regional headend where I work and it was under strict supervision, one yellow fibre cable the size of a headphone lead could take out an entire town if pulled out!

[Niall]

I was really unimpressed with bt tower. Everything the public see is very impressive but considering it supplies most of London, it's a shit hole behind the scenes!
I've worked in server rooms before owned by companies on much smaller scales and they have been far more professional. And the best bit, the telephone exchange there, they have a permanent member of staff there who basically gpwalks round fixing faults ect. He basically admitted to me he didn't know what he was doing when he wanted to know what we was doing!
I did go for a job at VM with the intention of getting into networking but never got the job. Gave up with that area in the end. Closest I get to networking now is a networked fire alarm system....simple!

Oh and it was their Bromley office I went to for my interview. Didn't get to see anything technical except photos but did seem very impressive!

[Rippthrough]

Wireless on an older Virgin 50Mb connection. Speeds not yet doubled in the area.

Phil your upload is still at the 50Mb rate, the re-tiering isn't complete yet but you'll get 10Mb upload after the migration later this year/early 2013. Forf now you still have the 50Mb upstream rate.

Pretty much all the channels you need from an interference point of view are 1, 6 and 11. Anything else inbetween crosses over and interferes, so if those three channels don't work well the rest won't either...

Yeah, supposed to be winter we get switch to the 10mb once the infrastructure is ready.

1,6,11 around here are a waste of time, there's dozens of networks already on them, and the BT OpenZone shit has so much power if it changes onto the channel you're on (they use 1,6,11), it kills the network so much you can't even log on the Superhub. I get double the signal strength from the 3 BT community routers which are ~200ft away compared to the SH 10ft away, that's how much power they're transmitting

Plus, like I say, channel 4 doesn't work at all, you get a carrier but no data stream!

[Pete]

Two can's and a piece of string spring to mind lol.

[darrenjlobb]

Gotta love living in the middle of no where...

Most annoying thing, is that 90% of people on my exchange now have 50-100meg FTTC connections, except where I live..like 5 houses on the entire line, and no green box even...cant see anything being upgraded anytime soon for us!

[C.A.R.]

Our Superhub lasted all of 3 hours working as a wireless modem. It's now plugged into a wireless router from PC World, which gives a far more stable wireless connection throughout the house, and stronger signal at the same time.

[stevieg]

this is at work over wireless



i'll post my home connection later if i remember

[ginge191]

Oh great.... Brains have hit the thread, fun has been removed. Cya's

[Niall]

Oh great.... Brains have hit the thread, fun has been removed. Cya's

Stop whining you ginger little bitch!

[rocker8742]

running off my phones connection

[Skank_army]

Brilliant speeds


Oops made it worse

Rocker, your ping is atrocious mate! You must have a really shit line. I'd get on the phone and complain if were you

---

[rocker8742]

Im guessing lower is better then skank never really understood ping lol

also not sure why but its saying im based near London rather than in devon

[Skank_army]

Yeah mate, Ping actually stands for Packet INternet Groper lol. It sends echo request packets to a target host, and measures the time between sending the packets and receiving a reply. So lower ping = better. Ahhhh, try changing server to one closer, it may improve your results slightly. Also what browser do you use? /geek

[rocker8742]

Using firefox and when i moved it to the closer server got a worse result

[cwspellowe]

Speedtest has an option to just "start test" which determines the best server based on the fastest ping. If you got those results just pressing the "begin test" button it's pretty conclusive.. shit line. Haha.

[kyleo92]

   

Win!! I pay £35 a month for 60mb + Tivo.. got to love staff deals

[ginge191]

Just got a new virgin connection put in.. loving it.

[Scott]

I have a constant 11.2mB/s on large transfers using my VM connection...roughly 90mbit which isn't bad for usage at peak hours. Had over 12mB/s when it's offpeak

[cwspellowe]

Just got a new virgin connection put in.. loving it.

Oi twatface, told you you should have waited for me! Would have got you f*cking everything for much cheapness!

Oh well, you've missed out now haha

[ginge191]

Just got a new virgin connection put in.. loving it.

Oi twatface, told you you should have waited for me! Would have got you f*cking everything for much cheapness!

Oh well, you've missed out now haha

"Jonathan" on the telephone was so pushy, we had to get it sorted as installation was the next day? Bloooody virgin salesman.
And tbf, £20 a month, im happy with that

[burnmw]

Hmmm....

[Niall]

supposed to be 100mb but this is on wireless across the house. Not ideal tbh but then again these speed tests are pretty crap. did another 30 seconds later and got 58mb

[zx_volcane]

Not bad for 3g

[Tom]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Worst i've ever seen it!