Full Fibre Broadband Installation

The speed thing is somethging I noticed when I moved to fibre - speed test gave me 5-600 up and download, but you are always restricted by the systems the other end. I download lots of very big files - video and samples - so 50Gb would be quite normal, but instead of the super speed, I note in practice, big downloads can still be the same sort of speed I had pre-fibre. Steinberg, for example - their updates are still slowish. Spitfire Audio is much, much faster. Native Instruments seem to have lots of servers and some seem quick and others much slower. I guess the other issue is the dynamic nature of internet connections - I wonder sometimes if the traffic between my home and the office might be going via venezuala when it crawls. Youtube uploads can be mega speedy, or longer than the time it takes to make a coffee including boiling a kettle!
 
I would complain about that Rich. My download is well under yours, just tested it at 37.38 Npton to Glasgow but upload is 8.85 so you are only doing a couple of meg better than me.

Now, it takes two to tango so if most private links have a much slower upload than down how does having a blistering download speed help? I have never had an internet problem that could be put down to my sub 40Mbps download speed but I can SEND files about as fast as you mate!


Dave.
Actually, this is very typical of asynchronous or asymetrical internet. My service is stated to be 300/10, so I'm actually doing well. It's a way to maximize the available bandwidth. If you have, say, 1 Gb of bandwidth, and you reserve 100 up and 100 down for each customer, you can only service 5 customers. If you go 10 up and 100 down, you can service 9 customers. For the typical home user, they never come close to maxing out the upload speed,

When I first got hi speed access, it was 10 down, 1 up. Of course that was many years ago, and was well beyond what the typical T1 line did at the time (1Mb up and down). Unless you are running a server or continually doing very large uploads to Youtube or your Google drive, then 10M uploads are no problem. For streaming a video, you are generally only sending a few bytes for the request, and then any handshake bytes to confirm that you received the packet. All of the heavy work is coming down.

I would have to change providers to go to synchronous internet, something that would very good for Rob, since he's sending files back and forth from his server.

Anybody here remember using a 110baud acoustic coupler? I remember downloading a basic game file for my TI99/4A. It took maybe 10 minutes to download a 4 or 5 Kilobyte file! I guess that is progress. We could have never conceived of the amount of data that is transferred today.
 
Last edited:
My first dip into the online waters was with a 2400 baud phone line modem which was fine for text only, when images began to come into it those could take 20 minutes. Watching each scan line slowly draw itself across the screen was excruciating. Years later a friend had Dish satellite over a phone line and it was no better at downloading images - no idea what it's speeds were.
 
Last edited:
I was a relative late-comer to the internet. I think my first modem was 14Kbit or so, fairly quickly updated to 56K.
I can still make the noises.
The speed thing is somethging I noticed when I moved to fibre - speed test gave me 5-600 up and download, but you are always restricted by the systems the other end. I download lots of very big files - video and samples - so 50Gb would be quite normal, but instead of the super speed, I note in practice, big downloads can still be the same sort of speed I had pre-fibre. Steinberg, for example - their updates are still slowish. Spitfire Audio is much, much faster. Native Instruments seem to have lots of servers and some seem quick and others much slower. I guess the other issue is the dynamic nature of internet connections - I wonder sometimes if the traffic between my home and the office might be going via venezuala when it crawls. Youtube uploads can be mega speedy, or longer than the time it takes to make a coffee including boiling a kettle!
Gigabit has a fair use policy, I read. If you hammer it during peak times regularly, they would slow you down.
Peak is 4pm to 130am. So, I'll do any large transfers in the early hours, or mornings.
 
I don't know what folks are like in your area Ray but here in parts of Northampton people have had exposed cables like that vandalized. I would at least get some 1/2 round trunking and "No Nails" it over that cable.
Today's job was go to garden centre, and buy a couple of plants that will grow big enough to hide the external hardware.
For symetry, I bought two Rhododendron Cunningham's White plants, and if the label is correct should grow to 5' high and 5' wide each.
Spent the afternoon digging strategic holes, and planting them in the rain. They will either flower in May or die.
I'll let you know.
 
I was a relative late-comer to the internet. I think my first modem was 14Kbit or so, fairly quickly updated to 56K.
I can still make the noises.

Gigabit has a fair use policy, I read. If you hammer it during peak times regularly, they would slow you down.
Peak is 4pm to 130am. So, I'll do any large transfers in the early hours, or mornings.
Here in the States our providers refer to this as throttling. One of my previous ISPs would allow me full throttle (highest speeds) until I reached my agreed upon data limit for that monthly period - it was some 50GB of data at the time - then I would be throttled. In actuality, I could never tell the difference when it happened because I was not a high demand user.
 
I would imagine that it would be relatively easy to reach 50GB of data if you were using a streaming service for all your TV. Something like Hulu, Youtube or Google TV would suck up a lot. I just checked my usage on this laptop alone and I've used over 60GB of data in the last 30 days. I've watched a few shows on HBOMax with my Roku TV, so I would conservatively guess I've hit 100GB.
 
The ISPs ought to be upping their data allowance. Phone data allowances have risen over the years.
The sales blurb for Giganet braggs about downloading movies double quick. It woud be unfair not to allow customers to do that.
 
They don't always apply their throttling, mostly just reserve the right to use it during peak hours or whenever there's strong demand, mainly to make sure everyone gets their fair share. Of course I assume those paying $400+/mo for large household services probably get priority usage with no throttling.

Many plans are based on GB limits, giving 100% up to whichever level you've signed on for, then (possible) throttling when you've exceeded that figure.
 
I do see throttling on phone plans. The less premium the plan, the lower the data allowance. Some might give 20GB at 5G speed, but then kick to 4G above that. Others give you all the data you can chew up at max speed. Money talks.

My cheap plan gets 2GB mobile data per month. The highest usage over the past 5 months was 354MB. I don't stream on my phone, and 90% of the time it's on my home network anyway.
 
This thread is of particular interest to me because with or without my permission, come Monday morning, all 361 feet of my streetwise frontage will be invaded by a communications company excavating and laying fiber optic cable. They promise remediation in that they will reseed the lawn sometime in the future.
 
Back
Top