Comprehensively dumbed down speed test for consumers to beat up theirISP with

In message , Norman Wells
writes

You need no more than 4 or 5Mb/sec for iPlayer even in HD, 3 if you
believe the BBC iPlayer website. Anything above that is for willy
waving, pure and simple. You can see that from the pointless pride
that exists and the bragging that goes on, even above.

I'm tempted to agree, at least to a certain extent. Our speed here (in
rural Scotland!) is excellent, and having upgraded to 'super fast', I
really do not notice a difference in actual usage. I'm not a gamer, but
perhaps those who actively play games online notice the difference?

--
Graeme

"Andy Furniss" [email protected] wrote in message
...
Norman Wells wrote:
"chris" wrote in message
...
On 21/05/2016 12:33, David wrote:
On Fri, 20 May 2016 16:48:27 +0100, Woody wrote:

Speedtest.net shows me as getting around 74Mb/s - which is correct as I
am on VM.

fast.com shows 51Mb/s

Just tried it and it shows 150Mb/sec down.
Ties in with the regular SamKnows monitoring.
The day and time you test may, of course, make a difference.

Doesn't show an upload speed - the FAQ says that is because this doesn't
matter to most people.

Rubbish!

Most people don't understand how it works, but if they were sold a
product based on upload speed alone they'd care very quickly.

Whereas download speed is important for willy wavers, but for little else.

Well I'm glad we've got 64 mbit rather than the 6 we had on adsl.

Last week alone, 3 xbones new map pack for a game we all play = 25 gig.

Bought a game for myself = 40 gig download.

Wouldn't getting a life be rather more productive?

"Andy Furniss" [email protected] wrote in message
o.uk...
Martin wrote:

Doesn't show an upload speed - the FAQ says that is because this
doesn't matter to most people.

Rubbish!

Most people don't understand how it works, but if they were sold a
product based on upload speed alone they'd care very quickly.

+1

Yea, be sure to beware of Plusnet now who will only do 40/2 and not
40/10 for those that don't choose 80/20 or can't get due to line length
above 40 down on an 80/20.

It's hard to decipher, but are you trying to tell us Plusnet is no good for willy
wavers?

"Sid." wrote in message ...

It took me nearly 5 hours to download a 13GB file yesterday.

You must be exhausted, poor dear.

On Mon, 23 May 2016 17:08:07 +0100, charles
wrote:

As my next-door neighbour pointed out, if you have 2 teenagers in the house
4 or 5 Mbps is insufficient.

40 to 50 Mbps could well be insufficient if it's accompanied by an
inadequate upstream channel which those teenagers are saturating by
swapping large files such as video clips or gaming software.

There's more to the internet than just watching stuff, but for
historical reasons most services are so asymmetrical that you have to
opt for ridiculous downstream rates in order to get usable upstream.

Rod.

"Roderick Stewart" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 23 May 2016 17:08:07 +0100, charles
wrote:

As my next-door neighbour pointed out, if you have 2 teenagers in the house
4 or 5 Mbps is insufficient.

40 to 50 Mbps could well be insufficient if it's accompanied by an
inadequate upstream channel which those teenagers are saturating by
swapping large files such as video clips or gaming software.

There's more to the internet than just watching stuff, but for
historical reasons most services are so asymmetrical that you have to
opt for ridiculous downstream rates in order to get usable upstream.

You don't think it's right then that those who monopolise a valuable technological
resource for utterly inane purposes should pay a premium for that?

Norman Wells wrote:

"Andy Furniss" [email protected] wrote:

Yea, be sure to beware of Plusnet now who will only do 40/2 and not
40/10 for those that don't choose 80/20 or can't get due to line length
above 40 down on an 80/20.

It's hard to decipher

They used to do 40/10 or 80/20, now they do 40/2 or 80/20, so if you
don't go for the willy-waving package, you'll have even less to brag
about ...

"Andy Burns" wrote in message
...
Norman Wells wrote:
"Andy Furniss" [email protected] wrote:

Yea, be sure to beware of Plusnet now who will only do 40/2 and not
40/10 for those that don't choose 80/20 or can't get due to line length
above 40 down on an 80/20.

It's hard to decipher

They used to do 40/10 or 80/20, now they do 40/2 or 80/20, so if you don't go for
the willy-waving package, you'll have even less to brag about ...

Oh, they can't get it up any more! Now I think I understand.

"Martin" wrote in message
...

There are people in cities with broadband less than 2 Mbs, including my son
until recently.

What happened? Did you have a DNA test?

On Tue, 24 May 2016 09:28:10 +0100, "Norman Wells"
wrote:

As my next-door neighbour pointed out, if you have 2 teenagers in the house
4 or 5 Mbps is insufficient.

40 to 50 Mbps could well be insufficient if it's accompanied by an
inadequate upstream channel which those teenagers are saturating by
swapping large files such as video clips or gaming software.

There's more to the internet than just watching stuff, but for
historical reasons most services are so asymmetrical that you have to
opt for ridiculous downstream rates in order to get usable upstream.

You don't think it's right then that those who monopolise a valuable technological
resource for utterly inane purposes should pay a premium for that?

It's nothing to do with monopolising anything. It doesn't seem right
that a 10-20Mb/s ADSL downstream channel can be brought to a
standstill by means of 1Mb/s worth of traffic in the opposite
direction. I'd say it was bad design if I didn't know the historical
reasons for it. I don't know how easy it would be to correct it.

At one time, that degree of asymmetry may have made sense in terms of
typical usage, as the vast majority of the traffic would have been
downstream, very few people having the means to generate anything
other than text emails or commands to send upstream. But then we
invented digital video cameras and made them cheap enough for
everybody to have one in their pocket, and then video sharing
websites, and blogs, and selfies etc, and an entire subculture that
never existed before now generates masses of material that they all
want to share with the world, so the capacity of the upstream channel
has now become very important.

Rod.