web speed

[paul holder]

as you all know we are abbotstools and we sell kingdick tools over the web . i am at present with orange down a bt line , i is supposed to be 8meg but is infact 2meg .all the other propety by me ars the same.it takes 3min to down load orange e mails and 3min to down load hot mail . when the kids come home it goes even slower .we have virgen at the front of the property . the question is to any one who has virgen 10 ,20 ,50 meg is is it that much better ??? i dont wont the tv only webb & phone

[Matt]

I'm with virgin. I pay for 20 Mb, I get:

[Nos4r2]

I'm with Virgin too. I pay for 10mb. I get:-

[willk]

Three minutes to download emails? What's in them, Hi-rez imagery or are there hundreds of them?

Do all the PCs on site take the same time to download emails?

At 2MB actual, emails should download much quicker than that. I'm wondering do you have a PC issue perhaps? Another possibility could be issues at the server end, I don't know what Orange are like in this respect, but Hotmail can be less than stunning (Mrs willk uses it )

[Starovich]

be aware, speed is not only limited by provider. most use the same hardware. In most cases regardless of the provider the signal has to come down the same phone lines and via the same exchange.

The max I can get at my house is 5mb no matter which of the normal providers i use, unless i go for one who use a different physical line (cable TV provider usually).

In addition, the contention can also be a factor, if you are on a 50:1 contention you could be sharing the connection with 50 others, so degrading your performance.

I can pay any of the providers for a 20mb connection, and they will take my money, but i still wont get more than 5mb, they get away with this disception and in my opinion, theft, by saying its "up to 20mb".

Try here to check max speed

[paul holder]

thanks for the replies . to the chaps with virgen i can see that you get what it says . but does this speed give faster response than i get ,is the 20mb faster than the 10mb .i wont to make sure i do the right thing because they will have to dig up my drive

[MikeCC]

We used to have Virgin cable (or NTL as it was then) and the line speed was much more consistent than the ADSL we have now. The other difference I noticed was the initial loading of webpages - much quicker to get going than ADSL (ie lower latency).

At work I'm only 100m from exchange but max speed is only 5-6Mb.

Whilst Virgin/NTL service may not be the greatest, the actual product was good in my experience.

[Starovich]

IF your getting a true Virgin cable then yes your should get the faster speed. I however wouldn't, as they don't have the infrastructure to get the fast lines to my house, so even through virgin, I would still only get 5mb as it would still come down the phone lines.

I think the VM site has a checker for finding out the fastest speed you can get at your address (note, address not phone number, as they may have the fibre optic cables for fast connection in your street just not hooked up yet).

[Matt]

Good point made by Starovich - it has to be their "cable" broadband.

Your question is a bit self answering - is it necessary to own a 100mph RIB if you only want to go 50. You'll still get there, it just takes a bit longer. How fast do you want to go. I have always found the performance to be pretty much bang on what I pay for, but whether it's worth it or not, only you can decide.

On the 20Mb connection, I rarely, if ever, find myself thinking I wish this internet connection was faster - except when rib.net has one of its periodic slowdowns, but that's usually JK needing to put another 50p in the meter, not because of the broadband provider.

Originally Posted by paul holder

thanks for the replies . to the chaps with virgen i can see that you get what it says . but does this speed give faster response than i get ,is the 20mb faster than the 10mb .i wont to make sure i do the right thing because they will have to dig up my drive

[SPR]

interesting its still calling my Virgin account - Telewest! Wonders what 100 Mb will be like!



it works out cheaper to take a phone line...even if you dont use it!