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Is BT 8mb broadband actually 8mb??
SierraL_killer - 20/12/06 at 08:03 PM

Hi all, i seem to remember someone posting a query relating to this problem. They had signed up to 8mb but were only recieving 1-2mb. Has this problem been resolved? BT are asking me to upgrade but there seems to be no point unless its guaranteed to be a lot faster.
Cheers
Rob

zetec - 20/12/06 at 08:11 PM

My download speed is showing as 6.3 meg.

SeaBass - 20/12/06 at 08:15 PM

quote:
Originally posted by zetec
My download speed is showing as 6.3 meg.


What do you mean by this?? Where is it showing as 6.3Mb/s?

I recently upgraded my Pipex account to a Max service... The DSL downstream connection speed on my modem/gateway/router showed 1044 Kbps and now is changed to 8128Kbps but I have seen little improvement in the download speed at a machine via HTTP...

Good job I didn't pay anything to upgrade then eh??

Cheers

ecosse - 20/12/06 at 08:22 PM

quote:
Originally posted by SierraL_killer
unless its guaranteed to be a lot faster.
Cheers
Rob


No guarantees in this game
Actual speed is dependant on several things, time of day, amount of users on the local loop (and what they are doing with there connection) distance from exchange, remote network bandwidth availability, remote server speed etc etc.

8mb is just the best you can hope for in ideal conditions

Cheers

Alex

goodall - 20/12/06 at 08:57 PM

also its 8 megabytes not 8 megebits! your only getting 1 megabit because a megabyte is 8 times smaller than a megabit. i think i've used those words right and normally files are in megabits rather than megabytes

ecosse - 20/12/06 at 09:10 PM

quote:
Originally posted by goodall
also its 8 megabytes not 8 megebits! your only getting 1 megabit because a megabyte is 8 times smaller than a megabit. i think i've used those words right and normally files are in megabits rather than megabytes


No, its actually the other way around
Download speeds in are measured in bits so an 8 megabits link works out to around 1 megabyte of real transfer speed
Aint it fun
Cheers
Alex

goodall - 20/12/06 at 09:16 PM

yea so much fun i decided to give up on the wanting to be a computer person, it looks like engineering will be my carer of choice

i sounded kinda agressive in that last message but i was tryin to show that its abot misleading was all

[Edited on 20/12/06 by goodall]

SeaBass - 20/12/06 at 09:49 PM

quote:
Originally posted by goodall
yea so much fun i decided to give up on the wanting to be a computer person, it looks like engineering will be my carer of choice

i sounded kinda agressive in that last message but i was tryin to show that its abot misleading was all[Edited on 20/12/06 by goodall]


Have you been drinking again??
I'm a big inline 5 fan - currently running a 90 with 20v 7A. Q of course.

[Edited on 20/12/06 by SeaBass]

zetec - 20/12/06 at 10:02 PM

I got it from a download test...cant remember where, might have been off BT web site.

mangogrooveworkshop - 20/12/06 at 11:12 PM

192.168.1.1

type that into your browser and put admin and password. in the boxes. Status pages should tell you what you are getting from BT.
Through put is much lower check with http://specials.zdnet.co.uk/misc/band-test/speedtest500.html

goodall - 20/12/06 at 11:25 PM

i like you mr seabass! well its the drink talking cause as far i remember i haven't been drinking, i think its the wasted childhood

well quattro is the only real way to go with an audi

stevebubs - 21/12/06 at 01:15 AM

quote:
Originally posted by goodall
i sounded kinda agressive in that last message but i was tryin to show that its abot misleading was all


Misleading isn't the world - although Ofcom do now force Service Providers to put the words "Up to" infront of the "XXMb"

You should try designing the networks sometime....

britishtrident - 21/12/06 at 08:02 AM

Connection speed depends entirely on line quality and distance from the exchange.

Download speed depends on the above and the contention for bandwidth in your local area and contention for your isps connection to the internet backbone and server speed at the other end.

What all this means is: if you live right next door to the exchange with a line installed in the last 6 years you might get a stable 7mbs connection. If you live 3 miles from the exchange you are more likely to connect at 2 mbs second.

britishtrident - 21/12/06 at 08:05 AM

Most confusing of all are Be who advertise 25mbs when they actually can only hope to achieve up to 16mbs ----- still twice as fast as BT

iank - 21/12/06 at 09:17 AM

I always mentally add 'will never exceed' to any computer benchmark/rating.
The mobile phone manufacturer figures are even more 'optimistic'.

Marcus - 21/12/06 at 09:34 AM

I'm currently on Orange 2Mb, having upgraded from 1 Mb recently - hardly noticed any difference in speed, BUT I now have the flakiest internet connection ever! Surfing seems fine, but online gaming is a nightmare. Losing connection every 10 mins is not good when you're faced with 4 blokes with machine guns heading for your flag!

mcerd1 - 21/12/06 at 10:58 AM

quote:
Originally posted by ecosse
Download speeds in are measured in bits so an 8 megabits link works out to around 1 megabyte of real transfer speed


If anyone is interested (and dosen't know already):

1 bit = single unit (i.e. 1 or 0 in binary)
8 bits = 1 byte (a useful size on old 8 bit computers = a 4bit instruction and 4bits of data)
1024 bytes = 1Kilo byte
1024 Kilo bytes = 1 Mega byte
1024 Mega bytes = 1 Giga byte
1024 Giga bytes = 1 Tera byte
and so on....

if you look at the size of your HD, say 40Gb, it won't actually be the full size in Gb it will be approx. 40,000,000,000 bytes (rounded a bit and some formats might not use it all) a difference of nearly 3Mb and the bigger the disc the bigger the difference

someone correct me if I'm wrong - its been a long time since I did this stuff

Marcus - 21/12/06 at 11:09 AM

You missed one:

The Nybble - 4 bits or half a byte

[Edited on 21/12/06 by Marcus]

goodall - 21/12/06 at 11:27 AM

does anyone know why most lan systems are 100Mbps when harddrives are only 33Mbps and why can you get server with 10Gbps is it possible to get hard drives or memory that is the same speed as this or is this just a very optimistic speed which can only be gained if the server was right next to an other server and they only sent the mac addreas to each other and finaly does anyone know the real speed at which europe is connected to north america

[Edited on 21/12/06 by goodall]

Marcus - 21/12/06 at 11:55 AM

I suspect the LAN / server speed thing is to do with bandwidth more than outright speed. ie if 100 people are trying to access the same server at the same time - the available bandwidth ensures no one gets a particularly slow connection. In theory a single user could get 100Mbps I suppose.
Please feel free to pull to pieces though

mcerd1 - 21/12/06 at 01:17 PM

quote:
Originally posted by goodall
harddrives are only 33Mbps

I take it you mean the old 33Mbs IDE drives - I didn't know you could still by them?
I haven't had a 33 since my 486, 66 & 100's have been around for a long time and most things now are 133Mbs UIDE arn't they??

anyway I'm onto SATA now - they come in 150 and 300Mbs flavours (and 600 next year aparently)

or 2 x 300 in a RAID array = ~600Mbs I really noticed the differnce between this and my old 133 UIDE

-Robert

SixedUp - 21/12/06 at 01:28 PM

quote:
Originally posted by mcerd1
or 2 x 300 in a RAID array = ~600Mbs
-Robert


Though even this is a huge simplification, as it is actually talking about the speed of the disk interface, which the underlying disk hardware can rarely (if ever) fully utilise. Hence the use of multi-tier RAID arrays, with many disks combined in complex ways, and lots of caching, with the arrays often being matched to the workload that the applications using them are likely to generate.

At the end of the day, many of the numbers that people assume to indicate performance of a component in a computer system cannot be read in isolation from all the other components of that system. Its the combination of them that result in a good or bad overall experience.

Its not dissimilar to a car (trying to get back on topic here!) where you need light weight, stiff chassis, well designed suspension, powerful engine, good gearing, correct weight distribution etc etc before you get a car that will actually work well on a race-track. Just having a big engine is not enough :-)

Hope that helps
Cheers
Richard

stevebubs - 21/12/06 at 01:38 PM

quote:
Originally posted by goodall
finaly does anyone know the real speed at which europe is connected to north america



Kindof...Take a guess...

[Edited on 21/12/06 by stevebubs]

mcerd1 - 21/12/06 at 02:15 PM

quote:
Originally posted by SixedUp
Its not dissimilar to a car (trying to get back on topic here!) where you need light weight, stiff chassis, well designed suspension, powerful engine, good gearing, correct weight distribution etc etc before you get a car that will actually work well on a race-track. Just having a big engine is not enough :-)


I know what you mean - I thnk I had my last system quite well balanced (at least it seemed to run abit faster than other 2800+ Athlon systems at the time (even accounting for software differences)

I always recon that if you start with a really good motherboard and don't go too mad on the rest (i.e. good but not totaly overpriced and trying to match parts were you can) then you'll get a faily good result

My current board (ASUS, P5ND2-SLI and the last one) let me adjust/ overclock nearly everything to within an inch of its life, so I'm sure if I spent days at it I could get a bit more out of them

I think my next upgrades will be Graphics, Memory then Motherboard and CPU (in order of which one is slowing me down most)

but getting back to the topic - we have BT broadband at work (8Mbs) and it can be almost as slow as dial-up sometimes, most of the time (i.e. in office hours) we get about 2 to 4Mbs

iank - 21/12/06 at 02:58 PM

quote:
Originally posted by goodall
does anyone know why most lan systems are 100Mbps when harddrives are only 33Mbps and why can you get server with 10Gbps is it possible to get hard drives or memory that is the same speed as this or is this just a very optimistic speed which can only be gained if the server was right next to an other server and they only sent the mac addreas to each other and finaly does anyone know the real speed at which europe is connected to north america

[Edited on 21/12/06 by goodall]


Assuming you mean ethernet networks (the most common) the 100Mbps is the physical bit-rate of the electrical interface. You will never get anything like that rate for a number of reasons, the main ones being:
1. The huge number of bits used for the protocols, for short messages there can be more protocol bits than message.

2. Ethernet is a collision detect architecture. The easiest way to think of it (but a huge simplification) is each computer waits for a quiet time then shouts it's message, if two shout at the same time they notice and both shut up again for a short random amount of time and then try again. This means that if you ever get close to maximum utilisation the number of collisions increase and actual performance drops.

goodall - 21/12/06 at 03:48 PM

maybe about 100Gbps but theres a few interconnectors so like i have no idea

stevebubs - 21/12/06 at 06:19 PM

quote:
Originally posted by goodall
maybe about 100Gbps but theres a few interconnectors so like i have no idea


That's about right for 1 major provider....

goodall - 21/12/06 at 07:32 PM

so sumthin like 10Tbps