Internet Speed

[Skoal]

Re: Internet Speed

Good News!!!! I don't have to worry about my connection anymore!!! My f*cking computer is dead now. The nerd patrol or whatever at Best Buy is checking it out for me. When I boot up it loads the Pentium logo then turns off then comes on then off..you get the idea. After they check it out, depending on how much it is I may just buy a new tower.

[bside]

Re: Internet Speed

fiber is fiber optics. verizon has a service here called FIOS (it's fast!). they are slowly rolling it out.
and about the bigfoot card, yeah won't help (and is an overpriced gimick)

Fiber is available in the US. Wells Fargo Banking uses it in all of their call centers/mailing centers here in MN. I installed over half of it so i am positive on it.

Cable is well known for 2 main characteristics in my opinion.
- Cheaper bandwidth.
- Unstable transfer speeds.
Since everyone uses the same cable in the area you are living the bandwidth goes up and down according with how many people is using the service at a given time, that's easy to notice if you are online late at night. While everyone else is asleep you can notice the massive increase in performance, only to watch it go back to turtle speeds when everyone wakes up.
If they have troubles with the network and have to reroute some connections that means the load would reduce the bandwidth even more.
DSL is better in the sense that connection is dedicated, so you'll always recieve the full bandwidth, but the down side is that it's more expensive and connection speeds are lower.
You gotta call your ISP and check if they are having troubles (and when they are gonna fix em).
(Where I live the max for DSL is 2 mbps for download and 512 kbps for upload, but you always get that no matter what time of the day it is. I personally use a 1 mbps/256kbps because more than that would be overkill +1 )

In US, Verizon's FiOS is the largest and most known FTTP (fiber to the premises, also referred to as FTTH, or fiber to the home) service currently available to consumers. FiOS offers the maximum downstream of 50Mbps (varies by areas; most areas seem to be limited to 30Mbps), and upstream up to 5Mbps. Unfortunately, even 30Mbps plan currently costs $179.95/month, so the 5Mbps plan for $34.95/month would be what most of you will get.

Technologically and theoretically, however, you can get the same, or even faster speed than FiOS w/ DSL lines. The fastest DSL standard is VDSL (Very-high-bitrate DSL) and most of the current consumer products have the maximum downstream of 100Mbps and 50Mbps for upstream. But VDSL is designed for the very short distance, up to 1.5km (slightly less than a mile), and if you're located any far, ADSL is better. Not to mention VDSL service is very limited, and often only used in conjuction w/ other technologies, such as connecting your room within the apartment to the exchange box, to which the fiber optic is wired.

ADSL, or Asymmetric DSL, is the kind of DSL technology most widely available to consumers. When general public refers to DSL in US, it means ADSL. US was one of the first conutries to offer DSL service to the general consumers, but seeing the speed currently offered, it seems they're still using the very first technologies that they were using back when they first introduced the service. Using technologies such as High-bit Loading and Quadrable Spectrum, ADSL line can have a max downstream of 50Mbps and upstream of 12.5Mbps, as offered by Yahoo BB Japan, or maybe even higher in the future. Cable on the other hand is technologically limited to 30Mbps, even when they offer FTTN (fiber to the node, or fiber to the neighborhood), but still fast.


However, even if cable or DSL can have very fast speed, as Raydeus pointed out, they have this one big problem; stability. IMO, this is the greatest advantage fiber has over other lines, and this is precisely the reason why I got fiber in my home. Especially w/ DSL which has to use the existing copper wires which could be as old as 50 years, stability issue could cause a nightmare especially for online games which require a stable line if you don't want the sudden disconnects. For another example, I do online stock trades, so any disconnects can cause financial damages by not being able to buy/sell at the very time I want to. Not to mention unlike DSL, the speed stays the same no matter how far you're located from phone company's office.

Despite the fact that FiOS offers only up to 50Mbps, fiber can go a lot faster. In some parts of the world, if not many, fiber has a max of 1Gbps for both down- and up-streams. My plan shares the 1Gbps line within the neighborhood, and each houses are limited to 100Mbps on their end. Normally, I'm getting about 55Mbps. And the price is rougly $60/month.

I'm not saying Verizon is ripping everybody off as the cost of deployment can greatly vary due to the much larger land, but as the technology advances, they will be lower. In the meantime, I'd say 5Mbps plan still is worth every penny you spend just for its great stability.


BTW, IMHO, DSL being "dedicated" lines means pretty much nothing. Sure, DSL makes direct connetion to the phone company, but after that it's all shared anyways. What matters more is their "backbone," as to whether it's fast enough and if it's stable. Unless you live in the area where all the neighbors are heavy internet users and all of them use the same service, cable's speed shouldn't be affected much anyways. Of course, there probably are some bad companies that are letting like 30 users share the same line, which obviously kills the speed by a lot.

[Malevolent]

Re: Internet Speed

Fiber optix is a huge gamble i think. When i was installing fiber for Wells Fargo and Verizon Wireless's Satelite Towers, its so fragil even in the PVC and heavy duty ruber it comes protected in...and just like any cable (copper, fiber, coaxil), it degrades if theres a lot of turns in the run...So you could say your ethernet cable can slow you down as well...becasue its not transfering info at its optimal performance....anyone care to elaborate??

[Thrasher]

Re: Internet Speed

There is also TCP Optimizer. But unless you have something you don't know about hogging bandwidth I would bank on your ISP (like everyones ISP's for that matter) sucks.

[Gentoo]

Re: Internet Speed

You can use traceroute (or in windows land, tracert) to help identify the where the problem is. Visit this url:

http://www.mediacollege.com/internet/troubleshooter/traceroute.html

It's a mini-tutorial on how to use traceroute to figure out where a problem might be.

[Raydeus]

Re: Internet Speed

Thers something else that i just read about in Popular Mechanics that when heated it has a transfer rate of a 100% rather than copper a 65-70% transfer rate...I'll try and find the article.

Maybe superconductors? But then again those need to be at low temperatures not heated, so maybe not.

Besides, up until now they haven't found a superconductor that works at environment temperature.

[Malevolent]

Re: Internet Speed

Thers something else that i just read about in Popular Mechanics that when heated it has a transfer rate of a 100% rather than copper a 65-70% transfer rate...I'll try and find the article.

[Raydeus]

Re: Internet Speed

Cable is well known for 2 main characteristics in my opinion.

- Cheaper bandwidth.

- Unstable transfer speeds.

Since everyone uses the same cable in the area you are living the bandwidth goes up and down according with how many people is using the service at a given time, that's easy to notice if you are online late at night. While everyone else is asleep you can notice the massive increase in performance, only to watch it go back to turtle speeds when everyone wakes up.

If they have troubles with the network and have to reroute some connections that means the load would reduce the bandwidth even more.

DSL is better in the sense that connection is dedicated, so you'll always recieve the full bandwidth, but the down side is that it's more expensive and connection speeds are lower.

You gotta call your ISP and check if they are having troubles (and when they are gonna fix em).


(Where I live the max for DSL is 2 mbps for download and 512 kbps for upload, but you always get that no matter what time of the day it is. I personally use a 1 mbps/256kbps because more than that would be overkill +1 )

[Malevolent]

Re: Internet Speed

Fiber is available in the US. Wells Fargo Banking uses it in all of their call centers/mailing centers here in MN. I installed over half of it so i am positive on it.

[neighbortaru]

Re: Internet Speed

fiber is fiber optics. verizon has a service here called FIOS (it's fast!). they are slowly rolling it out.

and about the bigfoot card, yeah won't help (and is an overpriced gimick)

[Skoal]

Re: Internet Speed

I reset modem and router before I did the test. I am thinking it is my cable company. They are an obscure company that has two apartment complexes that they supply service to. They are awful. They do not offer any HD channels and the "digital" cable is awful. They "upgraded" to a new modem a few months ago. The old ones would just stop working for a few secs then come back on. Thanks for all the help.

[Mhurron]

Re: Internet Speed

beside yelling and complaining to your ISP (which i also do every 2 months or so). I'd recomend getting this. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833342001

Won't help the OP in the slightest.

It's also an overpriced POS that exists simply to take money from people who do not understand how networks work.

[Malevolent]

Re: Internet Speed

beside yelling and complaining to your ISP (which i also do every 2 months or so). I'd recomend getting this. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833342001

I finally saved up about 2.5 k and i finally built my dream machine. Using this card it beats my double ethernet ports by far!! FFXI runs with hardly any lag exspecially in Jeuno. High partied areas like the jungles and Garliage Citadel havn't been a problem. I suggest anyone who like high performance get this. i think its a great buy...also anyone who builds computers on a side job or anything i suggest you look into this and put it in every gaming computer you build for your customers.

[Jei]

Re: Internet Speed

what's fiber? can we get it here in the US?
cable is like the fastest choice that I know here :O

[Ameroth]

Re: Internet Speed

I was having this issue sometime ago as well. Try this:

Download the trial version of VisualRoute from http://www.visualroute.com; don't worry the trial is a full-working version, but can only be used for 15 days (ample time really). Start it up and type in an address, such as google.com. What the program will do is show every connection (hop) it makes to finally connect to the destination server (i.e. Google). It will also show you average connection times and bandwidth usage, etc. It will help you identify where, if any, there are connection slowdowns.

In my case, it was showing a massive delay at my ISP server. When i contacted Conmcast about it, they assured me they would relay the message. Not sure if they ever did care or not (probably not), but my connection returned to normal soon after.