10Mbps Broadband from NTL

[Nick Harvey]

I'd be interested to know from any of you lot who've gone up from 1Mb to 2Mb, what the perceived improvement is.

When I went from 56kb to 512kb, as expected, I noticed a huge difference and was very pleased.

When I went from 512kb to 1Mb, I was quite disappointed and came to the conclusion that although MY connection was nice and fast, I was always waiting for the other end to catch up (and I'm not just talking about TVF!).

Is it worth the twenty quid I'd have to throw at Freeserve/Wanadoo/Orange to do the upgrade, or does the rest of the world need to catch up first?

[cwathen]

When I went from 512kb to 1Mb, I was quite disappointed and came to the conclusion that although MY connection was nice and fast, I was always waiting for the other end to catch up (and I'm not just talking about TVF!).

The other thing to consider is that as your connection gets faster, you need to download bigger files in order to see a noticeable different in speed. As an (extremely crude) example, if you had a 51.2K connection which took 10 seconds to download a certain page, then changing to 512K would cause the same page to then take 1 second - a huge noticeable increase. Increasing the speed tenfold again to 5Mbps would reduce it to 0.1 seconds - faster but by nowhere near as big a margin and nowhere near as noticeable. A further tenfold increase to 50Mbps internet (which will appear in time) will reduce the time to 0.01 seconds - but the reduction in load time will be so slight that you now won't be able to see any perceiveable difference in speed even though the page loads 10 times faster.

But, if you were downloading large files, each of those speed increases would bring with them huge noticeable differences in download time.

Try downloading a few ISO images Nick, and I'm sure you'll feel the benefit of your faster connection. And think of the poor primitive people like me; I merely have a 256K connection.

[DJGM]

Try downloading a few ISO images Nick, and I'm sure you'll feel the benefit of your faster connection.

Indeed . . . have a go downloading ISO's of a Linux distro. You don't have to use it though. But seeing large files that
are about 600-700MB each come racing down the line is kinda fun, particularly if you haven't had broadband for long.

Try any of these . . . SuSE Linux - Kubuntu - Mepis - Knoppix . . .

One things for certain, with broadband, you certainly find yourself filling up your HDD a lot quicker!

[Pete]

I'd be interested to know from any of you lot who've gone up from 1Mb to 2Mb, what the perceived improvement is.

When I went from 56kb to 512kb, as expected, I noticed a huge difference and was very pleased.

When I went from 512kb to 1Mb, I was quite disappointed and came to the conclusion that although MY connection was nice and fast, I was always waiting for the other end to catch up (and I'm not just talking about TVF!).

Is it worth the twenty quid I'd have to throw at Freeserve/Wanadoo/Orange to do the upgrade, or does the rest of the world need to catch up first?

Oh I often feel the other website needs to catch up. It's really a matter of if you download big files although with the ISP formally known as Prince you'll have a cap on it rendering it useless for that purpose.

I'd only go for 2Mb if you were on a more geeky ISP like Pipex or Zen

[Gavin Scott]

I started a 1.58Gb file off this morning and to far have 800+Mb.

Having my 1Mb line (instead of a shared 750Kb one) has made the difference between me starting those mamoth downloads or not.

I recently bought a firewire "caddy" to pop extra drives into. I've already put quite a dent in my 80Gb additional drive.

The last time I bought a hard drive it was about £60 for 60Gb. This 80Mb one was £33.

[babyben]

I started a 1.58Gb file off this morning and to far have 800+Mb.

Having my 1Mb line (instead of a shared 750Kb one) has made the difference between me starting those mamoth downloads or not.

I recently bought a firewire "caddy" to pop extra drives into. I've already put quite a dent in my 80Gb additional drive.

The last time I bought a hard drive it was about £60 for 60Gb. This 80Mb one was £33.

I remember buying from 120gb drive and thought it was massive. I've now got that and a 250gb external drive..and I need more space.

I bought the 250gb external about three months ago and it cost me about £100. I've noticed that the prices are taking a tumble, now you can get laptops for less than £500.

But as for the internet, I recently jumped from 512kb to 1mb.. but I haven't really noticed a massive difference. I only think downloads are slightly quicker, but not by much.

[Nick Harvey]

I think a number of you have hit the nail on the head.

I do lots of surfing but very little downloading, so the advantage of speed isn't that noticable. I think I'll stick at 1Mb for the present.

You can tell how much I LOVE downloading by the fact that the 12Gb disc on this machine is nearly half full!

[cwathen]

Indeed . . . have a go downloading ISO's of a Linux distro. You don't have to use it though. But seeing large files that
are about 600-700MB each come racing down the line is kinda fun, particularly if you haven't had broadband for long.

There was more fun in the past however. How well I remember downloading Windows XP Beta 2 through a 56K modem which connected at 44K and an unmetered dialup connection which kicked you off every 2 hours.

Total download time was 50 hours, spread over 6 days, for a 640MB ISO image. I remember considering it to be a 'good hour' if I managed to get 15MB through the connection in that time! Ah, them were the days

[Sput]

Ah, them were the days

Oo yes. That reminds me - your sig takes *forever* to download on 42.6k

[cwathen]

Oo yes. That reminds me - your sig takes *forever* to download on 42.6k

It's a 10KB JPEG, the same as yours. Shouldn't take long at all.

[Sput]

Oo yes. That reminds me - your sig takes *forever* to download on 42.6k

It's a 10KB JPEG, the same as yours. Shouldn't take long at all.

I know, I know. It was a vain attempt to imply that some of us (guttingly) are still lumbered with a 56k!